DONALD DAVIDSON, AGRARIANISM, AND THE PLACE OF RURAL ART
In 1924, when the Dutch historian Johan Huizinga wrote The Waning of the Middle Ages, he showed how the significance of the 14th and 15th centuries looks quite different to someone who sees the period, not as signaling the dawn of a new age, but as bringing conclusion to an old one. On the question of late medieval art, Huizinga wrote, “Art was not a means, as it is now, to step out of the routine of everyday life to pass some moments in contemplation; it had to be enjoyed as an element of life itself, as the expression of life’s significance.” And with this and other Huizinga quotes, Donald Davidson would introduce his English lectures at Vanderbilt University on British and American ballads.A native Tennessean, Davidson remains one of the lesser known, and if I may venture to assert, underappreciated Southern writers of the twentieth century. Davidson’s student M.E. Bradford wrote of his mentor long after Davidson’s death in 1968, “It may well be argued that no one person has had a greater part in the development of a profession of letters in the twentieth century South than has Donald Davidson.” Bradford could think of only two exceptions: John Crowe Ransom and William Faulkner. Davidson continues to be best known as a member of the Southern Agrarians who in 1930 measured American industrial society against their view of an agrarian Southern past, and found it wanting. Although a leading contributor to I’ll Take My Stand, Davidson continued his career as English professor and writer of tradition until the end of his life. But he considered his work as Southern poet to be his greatest calling. And in this role Davidson demands scholarly attention.