Definition of john orley allen tate in English English dictionary
born Nov. 19, 1899, Winchester, Ky., U.S. died Feb. 9, 1979, Nashville, Tenn. U.S. poet and novelist. While attending Vanderbilt University Tate helped found The Fugitive (1922-25), a poetry magazine concentrating largely on the South, and contributed to I'll Take My Stand (1930), a Fugitive manifesto defending the region's conservative agrarian society. From 1934 he taught at several institutions, including Princeton University and the University of Minnesota, becoming a leading exponent of the New Criticism. He emphasized the writer's need for tradition, which he found in Southern culture and later in Roman Catholicism, to which he converted in 1950. His best-known poem is "Ode to the Confederate Dead" (1926)