Jessy Saba
ENG Honors
Regionalism
Characteristics of Regionalism
 Desire to record, celebrate, and mythologize the vast diversity of the United States’
different geographical regions
 Strict attention to recording accurately the speech, mannerisms, behavior, and
beliefs of people in specific locales
 Local-color writing that “paints” the local scenes and tends toward the humorous or
the sentimental
America’s Diverse Regions
Regionalism in literature embraces not the universal but the particular, focusing on what
specifically characterizes a geographical area and its people. Regional writers strive to
capture the speech, dress, common beliefs, and social interactions of a given locale. Two of
the most powerful American regional writers are Mark
Twain and Bret Harte, both of whom captured for their readers local life, manners, and
speech. In this collection you will read vivid examples of regionalism, set in locales such as
Jessy Saba
ENG Honors
the banks of the Mississippi River and the gold-mining camps of the West. As you read, look
for details of time and place that capture the flavor of a particular region.
The growing interest in regionalism during the late 1800s resulted from changes
occurring within the nation itself. As the United States rapidly expanded in the years after
the Civil War and as greater numbers of immigrants entered the country, regionalist
writers sought to record, celebrate, and mythologize the vast diversity of the American
landscape and its people.
Regionalist writers attempt to re-create in careful detail both the relevant physical
features of landscapes and towns and the often colorful characters who inhabit them. In
Life on the Mississippi, for example, Mark Twain records the speech patterns an
mannerisms of the steamboat pilot Mr. Bixby while conveying the beauty of the Mississippi
River and the challenges involved in learning to pilot a steamboat. In regionalist writing,
place is integral to the story itself, and the characters seem to belong to their particular
locale.
Local Color The shift toward interest in particular regions led to the movement known as
local color. Writers of local color use writing to “paint” local scenes. Many works in this
style contain interesting, eccentric characters and whimsical humor. Local colorists often
tend toward the romantic and sometimes the sentimental.
Crucial to local-color writing is the use of the vernacular, the language spoken by
the people in a particular locality. Local colorists felt that the best way to capture a region’s
heart and soul was to let readers “hear” its authentic speech patterns. These writers often
recorded regional dialect by presenting regional pronunciations rather than standard
spellings. In Twain’s “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,” for example, the
Western miner Simon Wheeler uses phrases like “cal’klated to edercate” instead of
“calculated to educate.” The colorful characters and situations in local-color writing would
be impossible to achieve without the use of the vernacular.