American literary regionalism

Common card · No. 279559

American literary regionalism, often used interchangeably with the term "local color", is a style or genre of writing in the United States that gained popularity in the mid-to-late 19th century and early 20th century. In this style of writing, which includes both poetry and prose, the setting is particularly important and writers often emphasize specific features, such as dialect, customs, history and landscape, of a particular region, often one that is "rural and/or provincial". Regionalism is influenced by both 19th-century realism and Romanticism, adhering to a fidelity of description in the narrative but also infusing the tale with exotic or unfamiliar customs, objects, and people. Literary critics argue that nineteenth-century literary regionalism helped preserve American regional identities while also contributing to domestic reunification efforts after the Civil War Richard Brodhead argues in Cultures of Letters, "Regionalism's representation of vernacular cultures as enclaves of...

Read on Wikipedia