Carry Me Back: Nostalgia for the Old South in Nineteenth-Century Popular Culture

Nostalgia for an idyllic antebellum South permeated both cultivated and vernacular arts in post-Reconstruction America. Bock's popular mode, along with his fictional persona and artificial dialect, contrasts with Bagby's high-minded autobiographical voice, but both the Northern purveyor of...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of American studies 1996-04, Vol.30 (1), p.1-24
Main Authors: Glazer, Lee, Key, Susan
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
African Americans
American Civil War
Art songs
Ballads
Choirs
Civil wars
Colloquial language
Composers
Cultural history
Culture
Folksongs
History
Musical keys
Nostalgia
Plantations
Popular culture
Songs
U.S.A
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Summary:Nostalgia for an idyllic antebellum South permeated both cultivated and vernacular arts in post-Reconstruction America. Bock's popular mode, along with his fictional persona and artificial dialect, contrasts with Bagby's high-minded autobiographical voice, but both the Northern purveyor of popular ballads and the Southern man of letters look back longingly to the same idealized past. While it is not surprising that writings of the fallen Southern aristocracy should resonate with nostalgia, the nostalgic voices of Northerners pretending to be former slaves are less comprehensible. Yet both men's memories of the Old South proved marketable.
ISSN:0021-8758
1469-5154
DOI:10.1017/S0021875800024294