Abstract
Robert Penn Warren’s first published essay was "The Briar Patch," his contribution to I’ll Take My Stand. That famous symposium offered a critique of industrialism and a defense of "the Southern way of life." Twelve essays on various topics by twelve different authors followed a joint "Statement of Principles" which served as the introduction to the volume and was to provide the thematic unity to the otherwise independent essays. Warren’s assignment was to deal with the role of blacks in an agrarian society. Warren himself later repudiated "The Briar Patch" as a more or less traditional defense of Southern segregation. At the time the essay was submitted, however, Donald Davidson had seen it as a progressive deviation from the traditional "Southern way of life" and attempted to exclude it from the collection.
