Appalachian, Southern, Universal, Global: The Case of Fred Chappell

Abstract

The article discusses the universal and global features of southern and Appalachian literature. As various southern writers confirmed in a 1980 poll, good regional writing must have a broad appeal and focus on universal problems, without neglecting to deal with specific local details, including dialects. Fred Chappell, a short story writer, novelist, poet, and essayist from North Carolina, who often claims to be an Appalachian author rather than a southern one, pursues the goal of universality through the use of oral history. Exploiting the traditional Appalachian folk genre of a windy, a local version of a tall tale, in some of his short stories he turns to universal motifs, listed, for example, in Stith Thompson’s motif index. Analyzing two of Chappell’s short stories, “The Storytellers” (including its early version “Elmer and Buford”) and “Simples,” the article focuses on the ability of motifs to travel around the world.