“Jim had a hairball as big as your fist, which had been took out of the fourth stomach of an ox, and he used to do magic with it."1 The American Regionalism literature movement happened in response to the political and social changes of the nineteenth century. Although examples testify that different regions had customs and societal rules that separated them, American Regionalism authors shared a set of characteristics in their writing that defined the meaning of American Regionalism literature as a genre.
Fig. 1 - This map of The United States in the early 1900s also gives an idea of the rough borders of American Regionalism literature.
American Regionalism Meaning in Literature
American Regionalism refers to literature focusing on a specific region of the United States. As early as colonial times, people were aware distinct cultures existed between areas separated by geography.
American Regionalism literature is a literary movement that emerged in the late 19th century and early 20th century in the United States. This movement was a response to the rapid social and economic changes that were taking place in the country during this time, as well as a desire to capture the unique regional cultures and landscapes of different parts of America.
American Regionalist authors captured these details by writing their dialogue using dialect, having characters perform customs local to the area, and including geographical characteristics unique to the region.
Influences on American Regionalism
Some influences on American Regionalism literature include:
Southwestern Humor
Beginning in 1790, authors published sketches and short stories shaped partly by tall tales in Arkansas, Tennessee, Alabama, and Mississippi–the region known as the “old Southwest.”
A tall tale is a wildly exaggerated story about the adventures of a larger-than-life folk hero, told as if it were a factual account.
Its intended audience was educated white men, and it was written in dialect using coarse language, crude situations, and physical humor. Familiar characters of Southwestern humor were the braggart, the con man, the mighty hunter, and the trickster. These tales subvert the Man vs. Nature conflict with humor to assert control over the wilderness while describing it in larger-than-life and/or mythical terms.
Down East Humor
Named after the sailing wind that blows from Boston to Maine, it focuses on the Northeast region. Like Southwestern humor, characters speak in vernacular, and the stories include mannerisms and geographical imagery that reflects the area.
Andrew Jackson becoming president majorly affected the development of Down East humor. His lack of social status and distrust of European influence was a blueprint for the character who became known as the “comic Yankee.” The comic Yankee was from a rural area, used common sense, and valued tradition over progress. There was usually a political slant to Down East humor, and the comic Yankee was a “wise fool” whose lack of complexity unintentionally exposed the cracks in the system. In addition, the comic Yankee’s outsider status allowed them to make conventionally moral observations.
Realism
Around the mid-nineteenth century, authors began to portray the world in their writing, warts and all. Rather than write about high society, they began to examine working and lower-class life. Their stories presented complex, true-to-life characters who sometimes behaved in ways that went against societal norms.
Realism differed from previous schools of writing because realistic works didn’t idealize society. In fact, authors used realism to critique outdated values and beliefs. Realism uses plain language and everyday situations to portray reality objectively.
American Regionalism Movement
The American Regionalism movement sprouted just before the Civil War and increased in popularity until the early twentieth century. American Regionalism texts tend to be written about rural areas, though some exceptions exist.
The Civil War and urbanization were factors in creating the American Regionalism movement. One of the outcomes of the Civil War was that it helped create a national identity. When the national government won the Civil War, national interests inadvertently eclipsed regional personalities. In addition, the masses of people who left rural areas to live in the city eventually adapted to the city's culture. At the regional level, people reacted to these changes by examining what made their area unique.
As such, the American Regionalism movement was vital in reuniting the country after the Civil War by creating bonds between the regions. In other words, they found a shared national history by discussing their cultural differences. Similarly, comparing urban life to the rural life left behind allowed the middle-class audience to become a community that was able to see how far they'd progressed as a civilized society.
American Regionalism Literature Characteristics
Scholars drew regional lines around coastal New England, the South, the Midwest, and the West. American Regionalism literature applied a broad group of characteristics to each specific region.
Setting
The setting of an American Regionalism text is crucial because the author intends for the story to be about a specific region. Because of this, Regionalist authors usually rely on the area's defining characteristics rather than plot to tell their story. If there is a plot, it revolves around the region’s customs and beliefs. The region’s geographical features are woven through the text, and sometimes the author uses topographical details to create conflict or function as a character.
For example, in Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), the Mississippi River directly affects Huck and Jim’s ability to escape.
Narrator
American Regionalism literature includes a narrator whose function is to translate the region’s culture for the reader. The narrator can be from the area or an outsider. The reader must determine the narrator’s reliability when they are also a character in the story. The narrator’s tone is usually sympathetic or ironic, but the author uses the lesson that the narrator learns from their observations as a way to include a moral value.
An “unreliable narrator” is the narrator of a story that lacks credibility. Depending on the text, the narrator can appear unreliable immediately or as the story unfolds. A narrator can be purposely unreliable (deceptive), unreliable because they don’t have all the necessary information, or psychologically unaware they are unreliable. A function of the unreliable narrator is to make readers question their perspective. The narrator in Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” (1843) is an example of an unreliable narrator.
Jean Finch, or “Scout,” as she’s nicknamed in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird (1960), is both a narrator and character. To Kill a Mockingbird takes place between the time Scout is five and eight and is written from that perspective, but there are clues in the text that it is actually Scout as an adult who is relating the events that took place. Using this technique, Lee could craft a story about Southern race relations that appealed to readers' sense of justice and recollections of their childhood naivety.
Themes
Change is a common theme in American Regionalism literature. However, there is a spectrum of resistance to change among works within the American Regionalism genre. Some texts are openly nostalgic about their traditional roots, while others use regionalism to offer social critique.
Cultural Touchstones
American Regionalism texts immerse readers in a specific region by drifting away from the storyline to share details that make the setting come alive. The narrator or other characters will tell stories that don’t have much to do with the plot, but they explain the history, superstitions, and customs of the region. Dialogue is written in dialect to try to mimic the way people from that area speak.
Fig. 2 - American Regionalism literature borrowed from the tradition of storytelling to create an opportunity to share stories of regional cultural differences.
American Regionalism Authors
Numerous household-name authors have written American Regionalism literature, such as:
The American Regionalism genre was important because it told stories typically sidelined or hidden. The rural experience, women, and minorities often found their place in this genre.
American Regionalism Literature Examples
Some examples of the American Regionalism literature genre include The Awakening, The Conjure Woman, and The Yearling.
The Awakening (1899)
Kate Chopin’s critique of New Orleans’s upper class is an example of American Regionalism literature that uses the genre to illuminate outdated customs. Chopin’s protagonist Edna Pontellier is an outsider, which allows her to challenge social and class norms and expose them to the reader. Chopin creates a community of characters interacting and speaking to each other, just as they would in nineteenth-century Creole high society.
The Conjure Woman (1899)
Charles W Chesnutt was an African American author at the beginning of the twentieth century. At the time, the mainstream literary market was primarily white, so Chesnutt had to appeal to a white audience in order to build a literary reputation. His book of short stories infuses subtle irony into American Regionalism literary techniques to poke fun at nineteenth-century African American stereotypes. His main character, Uncle Julius, beguiles the white audience with plantation stories while subverting the nostalgic hue surrounding them. Uncle Julius operates as a familiar “old slave” storyteller who speaks in a simple dialect. However, he speaks plainly, and his stark language does not allow the reality of slavery to hide in euphemisms. Underneath the “good old days” motif lies an honest look at history and moral condemnation.
Plantation stories are an example of a genre similar to American Regionalism known as “local color.” Local color stories use the same literary techniques as American Regionalism but use the methods to glorify rather than paint a realistic picture. Plantation stories were stories written after the Civil War that idealized slavery and characterized enslaved people as happy to be part of a system that worked together peacefully with a singular goal in mind.
The Yearling (1938)
Perhaps less controversial, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings’s story is about a boy in rural Florida who befriends a baby deer. The Yearling won the Pulitzer in 1939 for Rawling’s realistic depiction of life in the backwoods. This coming-of-age story uses American Regional literary techniques to contrast rural and urban life in Florida.
American Regionalism Literature - Key takeaways
- American Regionalism literature is a literary movement that emerged as a genre starting just before the Civil War and extending into the twentieth century. This movement was a response to the rapid social and economic changes that were taking place in the country during this time, as well as a desire to capture the unique regional cultures and landscapes of different parts of America.
- Some influences on American Regionalism literature were Southwest humor, Down East humor, and Realism.
- Characteristics shared among American Regionalism texts include a setting that highlights physical landmarks of the region, a narrator that translates the culture for the reader, a theme that focuses on the changes coming to the region, and cultural touchstones such as customs and superstitions that define the region.
- American Regionalism texts exist on a spectrum that measures their resistance to the changes in American society.
- American Regionalism literature was important because it included voices and stories previously sidelined by the traditional literary market.
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