Regionalism Case

Regionalism

The term regionalism ( or local color) in literature refers to the representation of a particular geographical area’s features: topography, habits, speech, manners, history, folklore, or beliefs. It concentrates on its uniqueness and beauty, but also analyzes the attitudes characters have towards one another and their community as a whole.

According to the Oxford Companion to American Literature, "In local-color literature one finds the dual influence of romanticism and realism, since the author frequently looks away from ordinary life to distant lands, strange customs, or exotic scenes, but retains through minute detail a sense of fidelity and accuracy of description". It’s conventional form is the sketch or a short story but also a novel.

Characteristics:

Setting: The emphasis often on the nature and its limitations. The setting is frequently distant and inaccessible, integral to the story and can become a character in itself

Characters: the character of the district or region rather than with the individual: they may become character types, sometimes stereotypical; marked by their support to the old ways, by dialect, and by particular personality traits central to the region. In women's local color fiction, the heroines are often unmarried women or young girls.

Narrator: usually an educated observer from the world beyond, who learns something from the characters; has sympathetic or ironic distance from them. The narrator serves as mediator between the rural folk of the tale and the urban audience to whom the tale is directed.

Plots: Stories may include lots of storytelling and revolve around the community and its rituals.

Themes:

• an antipathy to change and a degree of nostalgia for an always-past golden age.

• A celebration of community and acceptance in the face of adversity (women's local color fiction.)

• Thematic tension or conflict between urban ways and old-fashioned rural values is often symbolized by the invasion of an outsider who seeks something from the community.

Techniques:

• Use of dialect to establish authenticity of regional characters.

• detailed descriptions, especially of small, seemingly insignificant details central to an understanding of the region.

• Frequent use of a frame story in which the narrator hears some tale of the region.

Practitioners:

West: Mark Twain, Mary Austin, Bret Harte

South: Mary N. Murfree, Kate Chopin, George Washington Cable