Chapter 6 - The White Creole Tradition

Summary

Several figures led efforts by a white, Creole community in New Orleans in the late nineteenth century to preserve and perpetuate their Francophone literary traditions, particularly as they came to see its authority and significance eclipsed by the considerable fame of a writer who criticized their culture, George Washington Cable. Other factors added to these writers’ sense of increasing marginalization, including the fading of the French language from the workaday realities of ordinary life in the city, and the closing of French publishing companies as well. The efforts to rally against this marginalization led to public tension with Cable, which in turn launched the career of Grace King.