Warren, Robert Penn

Warren, Robert Penn (1905–89), born in Kentucky, by heritage had deep associations with the issues and traditions of the South, early indicated by his affiliation with the regionalist group that published The Fugitive while he was a student at Vanderbilt University (B.A., 1925). After receiving an M.A. at the University of California (1927) and further study at Yale and as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, Warren, while establishing himself as an author, began an academic career that included posts as a professor at Louisiana State University (1934–42), Minnesota (1942–50), and Yale (1950–73). The range and variety of his talents as well as a continuing concern with his regional background are evident in his early works: John Brown: The Making of a Martyr (1929), a biographical study; Thirty‐Six Poems (1935); and Night Rider (1939), a novel treating moral issues relating to the fight between tobacco growers and manufacturers in Kentucky at the opening of the 20th century. At this time he was also a founder and editor of The Southern Review(1935–42).

His second novel was At Heaven's Gate (1943), depicting an unscrupulous financier who, though he controls his Southern state, loses his daughter, who commits suicide; followed by All the King's Men (1946, Pulitzer Prize), treating a corrupt Southern governor like Huey Long but having a moral significance extending far beyond its topical subject; World Enough and Time (1950), a version of the notorious Kentucky Tragedy; Band of Angels (1955), a lush, full‐bodied Civil War story about a Kentucky plantation owner's daughter sold into slavery whose fight becomes an inquiry into the nature of freedom and the quest for individual identity; The Cave (1959), a labyrinthine study of the way in which diverse people, affected by the plight of a young Tennessee hillbilly immured in a cave, reveal in thought and action their basic natures; Wilderness (1961), the portrait of a Bavarian Jew who comes to the U.S. to fight for freedom with the Union army; Flood (1964), presenting people in a small western Tennessee town that is to be obliterated by the building of a dam and who are thereby forced to face their essential natures; Meet Me in the Green Glen (1971), about the tragic romance of a young Italian‐American and a middle‐aged farm wife of western Tennessee; and A Place To Come To (1977), the reminiscences of a 60‐year‐old classics scholar from his youth in Alabama. The Circus in the Attic (1947) collects stories.

Warren's poetry, first marked by metaphysical influences but later simpler, more regional, and more narrative in character, is published in Eleven Poems on the Same Theme (1942); Selected Poems, 1923–1943 (1944); Brother to Dragons (1953, revised 1979), a “tale in verse and voices” of the lurid early‐19th‐century Kentucky frontier murder of a black by nephews of Jefferson, and also an inquiry into the nature of evil and the quest of the individual for order; Promises (1957, Pulitzer Prize); You, Emperors, and Others (1960); Incarnations (1968); Audubon: A Vision (1969); Or Else‐Poem (1975); Now and Then (1978); Being Here (1980); Rumor Verified (1981); and Chief Joseph of the Nez Percé (1983). His New and Selected Poems since 1923 was published in 1985. Two brief nonfictional works are Segregation: The Inner Conflict in the South (1956) and The Legacy of the Civil War (1961), on the ways the war shaped American society and sensibilities. Who Speaks for the Negro? (1965) treats problems of integration, in large part through interviews with black leaders. A volume of New and Selected Essays (1989) gathers 13 literary studies dating back to the 1940s.

Warren's literary essays associate him with the New Criticism, as do several works, written with Cleanth Brooks, that served as influential college texts, including Understanding Poetry (1938) and Understanding Fiction (1943). His other critical writings include Homage to Theodore Dreiser (1971), John Greenleaf Whittier (1971), and Democracy and Poetry (1975). He was the nation's first Poet Laureate (1986–87). He was married to Eleanor Clark.