Poetry and the shaping of virtue

released 6/19/2026

This Friday Feature presents an interview with Glenn C. Arbery from Volume 103 of the Journal. Arbery discusses the mid-twentieth century group of literary critics in the American South known as the Vanderbilt Agrarians. These critics, along with their students, exercised an incredible influence on the study of literature. Arbery suggests they centered their criticisms around changing technological, social, and industrial norms, and they finally settled on the metaphor of agrarianism to highlight the aspects of traditional farming communities they believed did justice to the sort of life people were made to have. Through their prose and especially their poetry, they attempted to draw out and embody these aspects so as to strengthen their readers and communities to be able to resist the practices and norms of consumer society and hyper-mobility and busyness. Arbery discusses the particular strengths of the form of poetry and its power to be able to capture and communicate the truths concerning a well-lived life. This conversation ends with a short discussion of “new criticism.” Arbery is the editor of The Southern Critics: An Anthology (ISI Books, 2010).

This Feature also includes clips from two Bonus Feature lectures by Glenn Arbery, both provided by the Center for Beauty and Culture at Benedictine College. The lectures are “Lyric as Disclosure” and “The Tragic Self.”

32 minutes

PREVIEW

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