Their Old Kentucky Home: The Phenomenon of the Kentucky Burden in the Writing of James Still, Jesse Stuart, Allen Tate, and Robert Penn Warren

The focus of this project is to investigate the phenomenon of the Kentucky burden, and to explore the impact of that burden on four Vanderbilt-educated Kentucky authors of the early twentieth century. The works of James Still, Jesse Stuart, Allen Tate, and Robert Penn Warren reveal not only characteristics common to Southern regionalism in general but also traits radically particular to Kentucky. Through an exploration of the poetry and prose of these prominent Kentucky writers, we can gain a better understanding of the significance of their identities as Kentuckians and recognize the many obstacles and challenges the Kentucky burden posed for each of the four writers. I posit that the individual reactions of Still, Stuart, Tate, and Warren to the Kentucky burden dramatically affected their critical and popular success, thus deciding their place, or lack thereof, in the canon of American literature. By investigating this phenomenon, this project enters the debate concerning the existence of subregions within regionalism and further emphasizes the importance of the literature of the individual regions of this country which make up the whole American literature.