Living (or Not) Through Legendizing in Eudora Welty\u27s Fiction

I began my thesis as a way of exploring how the global south is portrayed in the fiction of Eudora Welty. Through reading two of her novels and various short stories, which are discussed in this thesis, I discovered that my interpretation of Welty’s writing includes a greater focus on people and relationships rather than the actual place they live. This interpretation sheds new light to the existing criticism on Welty and her fiction because she and her work are most often discussed in terms of place rather than people. Key to my argument is term I have coined, ‘legendizing,’ which describes the process by which the people in Welty’s fiction remain as insiders to the group by repeating a family or group “identity” regardless of the truth that lies in that identity; alternatively, those who do not abide by the group rules by legendizing do not have a place in the group and become outsiders. While the insider/outsider relationship as well as the circle metaphor are discussed in existing criticism, I see legendizing as the reason behind what makes someone an insider or an outsider (and in or out of the circle)