Circling Dixie
Contemporary Southern Culture through a Transatlantic Lens
By Helen Taylor
Rutgers University Press
For Europeans looking across the Atlantic, American culture is often the site of desire, fascination, and envy. In Britain, the rich culture of the American South has made a particularly strong impact. Helen Taylor explores the ways in which contemporary Southern culture has been enthusiastically produced and reproduced in a British context.
Taylor examines some of the South's most significant cultural exports in discussions that range across literature, music, film, television, theater, advertising, and tourism to focus on how and why Southern themes and icons have become so deeply embedded in British cultural life. The enduring legacy of Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind can be seen today in the popularity of sequels, revisions, and reworkings of the novel. The conversation between these cultures is further explored in British responses to Alex Haley's Roots, the British theater's special affection for Tennessee Williams's plays, and the marketing of New Orleans as a preferred destination for European tourists. The transformation of Southern culture--itself a hybrid of the European, African, and American--as it circulates back across the Atlantic suggests not only new views of the history, racial politics, music and art of both Britain and the American South, but also an enhanced understanding of the dynamic flow of culture itself.
Taylor examines some of the South's most significant cultural exports in discussions that range across literature, music, film, television, theater, advertising, and tourism to focus on how and why Southern themes and icons have become so deeply embedded in British cultural life. The enduring legacy of Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind can be seen today in the popularity of sequels, revisions, and reworkings of the novel. The conversation between these cultures is further explored in British responses to Alex Haley's Roots, the British theater's special affection for Tennessee Williams's plays, and the marketing of New Orleans as a preferred destination for European tourists. The transformation of Southern culture--itself a hybrid of the European, African, and American--as it circulates back across the Atlantic suggests not only new views of the history, racial politics, music and art of both Britain and the American South, but also an enhanced understanding of the dynamic flow of culture itself.
In Circling Dixie, a professor from the University of Exeter in England analyzes the fascination of the British with all things United-States Southern. The author examines the how and why that have caused Southern culture to become deeply embedded in British cultural life and how the reproduction of Southern cultural commodities has transformed those products within a British context. Particularly enjoyable is Taylor's discussion of New Orleans, America's European masterpiece.
Graceful and subtle in its prose, Helen Taylor's Circling Dixie is a great pleasure to read.
We knew that the British were fascinated with the tragic, gothic American South. This remarkable book not only documents the degree of that fascination, but also demonstrates the deep interconnectedness of two cultures. Here is an irresistible new case study for those interested in the form and function of hybridity.
The author's research on the way Southern themes and icons have slipped into everyday life across the Atlantic is impressive. There is no doubt that Circling Dixie will find a sophisticated audience both in the United States and in Europe.
HELEN TAYLOR is a professor and head of the School of English at the University of Exeter. She is the author of Scarlett's Women (Rutgers University Press), and coeditor of Dixie Debates.
Looking Transatlantically
"Gone with wind" into the millennium : sequels, borrowings, and revisions
Everybody's search for roots : Alex Haley and the Black and white Atlantic
New Orleans, "America's European masterpiece"
Tennessee Williams and the contemporary British stage
"A black ocean, leaping and wide": the ambition of Maya Angelou
"Gone with wind" into the millennium : sequels, borrowings, and revisions
Everybody's search for roots : Alex Haley and the Black and white Atlantic
New Orleans, "America's European masterpiece"
Tennessee Williams and the contemporary British stage
"A black ocean, leaping and wide": the ambition of Maya Angelou
