Shadow and Shelter - 9781578068043

Shadow and ShelterThe Swamp in Southern Culture\nAuthor(s): Anthony Wilson\nFormat: Hardback\nPublisher: University Press of Mississippi, United States\nImprint: University Press of Mississippi\nISBN-13: 9781578068043, 978-1578068043\nSynopsis\nTo early European colonists the swamp was a place linked with sin and impurity; to the plantation elite, it was a practical obstacle to agricultural development. For the many excluded from the white southern aristocracy--African Americans, Native Americans, Acadians, and poor, rural whites--the swamp meant something very different, providing shelter and sustenance and offering separation and protection from the dominant plantation culture. Shadow and Shelter: The Swamp in Southern Culture explores the interplay of contradictory but equally pre-vailing metaphors: first, the swamp as the underside of the myth of pastoral Eden that defined the antebellum South; and second, the swamp as the last pure vestige of undominated southern eco-culture. A.