Bells for John Whitesides Daughter by John Crowe Ransom

John Crowe Ransom was one of the most influential writers of his time. As a poet, essayist, and teacher at Vanderbilt University and Kenyon College, Ransom was one of the prominent leaders of the Fugitive Agrarians and the founder of the New Criticism school of literary criticism and the literary journal, Kenyon Review. His works fall into many different literary movements but the majority of his poems fall within the Fugitive-Agrarianism, now known as the Southern Renaissance, movement that emphasized classicism and traditionalism. The writers that were part of the Southern Renaissance, including Ransom, gathered to write a collection of essays that promoted and revitalized Southern literature in the United States. They were known for â€Å"representing the tensions and paradoxes that resulted from the collision of Northern and Southern ideologies† (Holmgren para. 3). Comparably, the Fugitive agrarians â€Å"emphasized traditional poetic forms and techniques, and their poems developed intellectual and moral themes focusing on an individuals relationship to society and to the natural world† (Davis para. 1). Both groups were especially focused on the intrusion of Northern industrialism and destruction of Southern agrarian culture. Ransom uses bursts of imagery of rural life that reflects the agricultural aspects that the Southern Renaissance movement stressed. He channels a lot of natural scenery in his poem, Miriam Tazewell, but a darker and more gruesome stage in Winter