A few years back Jerry Leath Mills chewed on an old and thorny question: What makes Southern literature Southern? According to Mills, a retired Carolina English professor, the true test of Southern lit is this: Does it have a dead mule in it?

Joseph Flora had to be mindful of dead mules and hundreds of other topics as he coedited The Companion to Southern Literature, (Louisiana University Press, 2002), a near-exhaustive reference on the South as it appears in literature. The book contains 500 articles written by 250 scholars, graduate students, fiction writers and poets. More than 40 of those contributors are here at Carolina, in departments ranging from English to exercise and sport science.

"We learned so much from the book," Flora said. "Our contributors were enthusiastic and dedicated."

The entries cover everything from abolition to Yoknapatawpha, the fictional Mississippi setting used by William Faulkner throughout his career. Contributors explore customs and cultures--Gone With the Wind, snake handling, the Sears Catalog, voodoo, grits--as well as literary styles, movements and genres. And yes, there's an entry on mules, written by Jerry Leath Mills.

As Flora and co-editor Lucinda MacKethan were putting the book together, their contributors suggested more topics, and each topic seemed to suggest another. "The book grew and grew, rather like Topsy," Flora said. Even so, the editors began to realize there were topics they wouldn't have time to tackle.

"As soon as my sons saw the book, they rebuked me for not having an entry on the dog," Flora said. "There are some splendid dogs in Southern literature--and the phenomenon of the dog fight. My sons were right."

Flora is no stranger to Southern literature, having co-edited several bibliographical and critical studies. He's written books on Vardis Fisher, William Ernest Henley and Ernest Hemingway. He's also on the editorial board of The Southern Literary Journal. Flora contributed 15 entries to The Companion to Southern Literature, including discussions of the Bible Belt, Jimmy Carter, sex and sexuality, and Sunday school.

MacKethan, now an English professor at N.C. State University, got her master's and doctoral degrees in English from Carolina.

Todd Taylor, an assistant professor of English at Carolina, was the book's associate editor. Among other things, Taylor helped turn hundreds of submissions--written on different kinds of software and disks--into a finished book. "I am not a master of technology, to put it mildly," Flora said. "So it was wonderful to get Todd Taylor to come on board to handle that end of things."