Loneliness: A Perennial Sad Ballad

The South is a special region in the USA for its inimitable cultural, economical, and religious conditions. In the first half of the twenties century, there emerged numbers of excellent writers in South. This thesis is going to discuss the images of different"Loners"in southern literature and to explore the artistic techniques employed by southern authors to describe the loneliness.Beginning with an introduction to the background of Southern Literature of America and the literary production, this thesis strives to trace three typical types of"Loners"in Chapter 2: fossil loners, struggling loners and the loners who stepped out of the South, and to present the efforts made by different writers to overcome loneliness. Chapter 3 focuses on the artistic techniques used to describe loneliness, including Stream of Consciousness, Gothic and Symbolism.At the turn of old and new times, southern writers created various"loners"with different personalities. The attempts to explore the meaning of life made by the characters in the literature also reflect the writers'understanding of life. Furthermore, these attempts make people nowadays who live in a more materialized society to start thinking about their own lives.