Download or read book Thomas Wolfe: The Southerner, The Existentialist written by Nicholas Alahverdian and published by Nicholas Alahverdian Press. This book was released on 2018-10-15 with total page 14 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thomas Wolfe, an author in the Southern Literary Renaissance, was not like the Southern writers that preceded him. These foregoing authors focused on historical romances, purportedly valiant efforts by Confederate soldiers, and the antebellum Southern condition. This historical writing, firmly rooted in the traditionally Southern rhetorical style (a method, as Allen Tate argued in his 1959 essay “A Southern Mode of the Imagination,” of writing based on persuasion and oratory) began to diminish as the South witnessed several crucial events: the abolition of slavery, the defeat of the Confederate forces, and Reconstruction [1865–1877].