FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. - The link to place has long been considered a defining characteristic of Southern literature. Increasingly, however, Southern writers are abandoning the settings of their native home in favor of the American West, and this literary migration may have serious implications for the way that regional literature is defined in the U.S.

So says Robert Brinkmeyer, chair of the English department and author of the book "Remapping Southern Literature."

For legendary writers like William Faulkner, Eudora Welty and Flannery O’Connor, Southern land and culture acted as the root system from which their fiction grew. But contemporary Southern writers appear to be branching out - exploring and imagining new territory as they set their stories outside of the South.

"In the past 10-15 years, more and more Southern writers have been looking westward," Brinkmeyer said. "Their characters are still Southern, but the plotlines lead these characters out of the South and into new places: the southwest, California and particularly L.A."

Aside from representing a new trend in a literary style long ruled by tradition, this westward expansion has caught scholars’ attention because it raises serious questions about the value and validity of regional classification. Brinkmeyer examined some of these questions in a recent presentation at the New Orientations in the Study of Regionalism conference, held at the University of Bonn in Germany.

In theme and style, Southern literature has traditionally differed from the rest of American literature, Brinkmeyer said. American themes revolve around frontiers, expansion and the boundless potential of the human spirit. In contrast, Southern literature has characteristically embodied history, community and a lingering familiarity with defeat.

But the barriers that kept the South physically and culturally distinct from the rest of the nation are rapidly crumbling according to Brinkmeyer. The result is a deterioration of regional identity that’s being reflected in the literature.

"Improved transportation, communication, television - all these things contribute to making America more homogenous," Brinkmeyer said. "Southern writers are no longer bound to a given place, and neither are their stories. We’re seeing a greater sense of freedom and possibility in Southern writing now than ever before."

This growing freedom has led writers and their characters into new areas of the country. In his 2000 book "Remapping Southern Literature" and more recently at his presentation in Germany, Brinkmeyer examined how other regions have been envisioned and used by Southern writers. His presentation focused on Dorothy Allison, Anne Patchett, Tim Gautreaux, Frederick Barthel and Darcey Stinke, whose recent works have placed Southern characters in and around Los Angeles.

Brinkmeyer determined that, despite their Western settings, the works remained fundamentally Southern in style and characters. As a general rule, the characters of these authors went west as a means of escape - to break free from the stifling bonds of community and tradition that ruled their lives in the South. However, once they attained that freedom, they usually found it overwhelming.

"Invariably, the reaction was then to return - if not physically to the South - to some of the values of the South, like community and responsibility. But it’s never a complete retreat," Brinkmeyer said. "They flee west to lose their identities. When they find they have to rebuild those identities, they draw from their Southern heritage, but they also mix in some Western values, which include movement and a hopeful focus on the future."

This pattern of escape and return proved particularly true for works set in Los Angeles. Writers seem to view L.A. as the farthest, most foreign point from their Southern roots, the ultimate post-modern city. Rather than being steeped in history and community, L.A. embodies eroticized spectacle, wild individuality and flamboyant irresponsibility, Brinkmeyer said. Yet several writers seem to suggest that as their characters reinvent themselves, they’re also capable of reinventing the city, of making it a better place.

And Brinkmeyer believes there may be some credence to that - that by mixing the ethos of the South with that of the West, we not only get a new vision, a new version of those regions, but we may more clearly perceive how they differ. Such intermingling of culture and place makes the concept of regionalism more complicated, but it doesn’t make it defunct, Brinkmeyer stated.

"Essentially, Southern writers have to leave the South if they are to prove that there’s more to their literary tradition than place," he said. "Even though much of the South looks like the rest of America, there are lingering and powerful regional forces that affect its culture. And there’s still a unique Southern mythology at work, which lurks in the imaginations of Southern writers."