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The Fugitives were a group of poets and literary scholars who came together at Vanderbilt University
Vanderbilt University

Vanderbilt University is a private university research university in Nashville, Tennessee, Tennessee, United States. Founded in 1873, the university is named for ship transport and rail transport magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt, who provided Vanderbilt its initial United States dollar1 million endowment despite having never been to the Southern...
 in Nashville, Tennessee
Nashville, Tennessee

Nashville is the Capital of the U.S. state of Tennessee and the county seat of Davidson County, Tennessee. It is the second most populous city in the state after Memphis, Tennessee....
 around 1920. They published a small literary magazine called The Fugitive from 1922-1925 which showcased their works. Although its published life was brief, The Fugitive is considered to be one of the most influential publications in the history of American letters. The Fugitives made Vanderbilt a fountainhead of the New Criticism
New Criticism

New Criticism was a dominant trend in England and United States literary criticism of the mid twentieth century, from the 1920s to the early 1960s....
, the dominant mode of textual analysis in English during the first half of the twentieth century.






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The Fugitives were a group of poets and literary scholars who came together at Vanderbilt University
Vanderbilt University

Vanderbilt University is a private university research university in Nashville, Tennessee, Tennessee, United States. Founded in 1873, the university is named for ship transport and rail transport magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt, who provided Vanderbilt its initial United States dollar1 million endowment despite having never been to the Southern...
 in Nashville, Tennessee
Nashville, Tennessee

Nashville is the Capital of the U.S. state of Tennessee and the county seat of Davidson County, Tennessee. It is the second most populous city in the state after Memphis, Tennessee....
 around 1920. They published a small literary magazine called The Fugitive from 1922-1925 which showcased their works. Although its published life was brief, The Fugitive is considered to be one of the most influential publications in the history of American letters. The Fugitives made Vanderbilt a fountainhead of the New Criticism
New Criticism

New Criticism was a dominant trend in England and United States literary criticism of the mid twentieth century, from the 1920s to the early 1960s....
, the dominant mode of textual analysis in English during the first half of the twentieth century. Even apart from this, the group would be remarkable for the number of its members whose works would claim a permanent place in the literary canon. Robert Penn Warren (Boss Warren) the first and foremost author in the Agrarian movement wrote in the Briar Patch, a look at the life of an exploited black in urban America.

Among the most notable Fugitives were John Crowe Ransom
John Crowe Ransom

John Crowe Ransom was an United States poet, essayist, social and political theorist, man of letters, and academic....
, Allen Tate
Allen Tate

John Orley Allen Tate was an American poet, essayist, social commentator, and Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1943 to 1944....
, Merrill Moore
Merrill Moore

Merrill Moore was an American psychiatrist and poet from Tennessee. He is best known to literary history as an extremely facile writer of sonnets and as an influential literary networker....
, Donald Davidson
Donald Davidson (poet)

Donald Grady Davidson was a U.S. poet, essayist, social and literary critic, and author. He is best known as a founding member of the Nashville circle of poets known as the Fugitives and of an overlapping group, the Southern Agrarians....
, Randall Jarrell
Randall Jarrell

Randall Jarrell was an American poet, novelist, critic, children's author and essayist....
, William Ridley Wills
William Ridley Wills

William Ridley Wills was a graduate of Vanderbilt University and a member of the Fugitives literary group. He worked for the Memphis Press, Memphis Evening Appeal, and the Nashville Banner newspapers before leaving for New York to become the editor for the New York World....
, and Robert Penn Warren
Robert Penn Warren

Robert Penn Warren was an American poet, novelist, and literary critic, and one of the founders of New Criticism. He was also a charter member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers....
 . Less closely associated were the critic Cleanth Brooks
Cleanth Brooks

Cleanth Brooks was an influential American literary critic and professor. He is best known for his contributions to New Criticism in the mid-twentieth century and for revolutionizing the teaching of poetry in American higher education....
 and the poet Laura Riding
Laura Riding

Laura Jackson was an United States poet, critic, novelist, essayist and short story writer....
.

The Fugitives partly overlapped with a later group, also associated with Vanderbilt, called the Agrarians
Southern Agrarians

The Southern Agrarians were a group of twelve United States writers and poets with roots in the Southern United States who joined together to publish an Agrarianism manifesto, a collection of essays entitled I'll Take My Stand in 1930....
.

External links

  • from Vanderbilt University Archives