Text
Analysis
Workshop
Included in this workshop:
RL 3 Analyze the impact of the
author’s choices regarding how
to develop and relate elements
of a story. L 1a Apply the
understanding that usage is a
matter of convention. L 3 Apply
knowledge of language to make
effective choices for meaning
or style.
Setting in Regional Literature
Many places in the world are fascinating, but some of the most ordinary places can
be interesting, too, if you notice what is unique about them. In the last half of the
19th century, regional writers in the United States strove to depict in their stories the
unique aspects of a specific place and of its people. These enduring tales give readers
a glimpse into the past and inspire a tradition that continues to this day.
The Growth of Regional Literature
Regional literature arose from an effort to
accurately represent the speech, manners,
habits, history, folklore, and beliefs of people
in specific geographical areas. Although
regionalism is considered an offshoot of realism,
it has been part of American literature from the
beginning. Washington Irving’s tales of Dutch
New York and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s stories
of Puritan New England are just two examples.
After the Civil War, however, when realism
became the dominant literary movement,
writers began to focus on the lives of ordinary
people and to avoid the supernaturalism and
sentimentality found in much of the work of
Mark Twain relaxes on a ship’s deck.
Irving, Hawthorne, and Edgar Allan Poe.
A factor that contributed to the growth of regional writing was the boom in
publishing in the late 1800s. Popular magazines sprang up all over the United
States to meet the demand for information about the rest of the country. Mark
Twain’s “The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,” for example, was
first published in a New York magazine and became an immediate sensation.
The Importance of Setting
The effectiveness of regional writing depends to a large extent on the depiction
of setting, the time and place in which a story’s events occur. Key elements of
setting in regional literature include the following:
• geographical location and physical features, such as a river, a camp, a house,
or a mode of transportation
• the time in which the events take place—a season of the year or a historical
period
• the jobs and daily activities of the characters
• the culture of the characters, including their religious and moral beliefs
and the social and economic conditions in which they live
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unit 4: regionalism and naturalism
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local color realism
Two means of conveying setting that are commonly found
in regional literature are the use of dialects—distinctive
forms of language spoken in particular areas or by particular
groups of people—and detailed descriptions of location.
Read this example from Twain’s “The Notorious Jumping Frog
of Calaveras County” (page 684).
“Rev. Leonidas W. H’m, Reverend Le— Well, there was
a feller here once by the name of Jim Smiley, in the winter
of ’49—or maybe it was the spring of ’50—I don’t recollect
exactly, somehow, though what makes me think it was one or
the other is because I remember the big flume warn’t finished
when he first come to the camp. . . .”
—Mark Twain, “The Notorious Jumping Frog
of Calaveras County”
The pronunciations indicated by the spellings feller and
warn’t, the expression “I don’t recollect,” and the use of
come rather than came all contribute to the regional flavor
of the piece. Although this dialect is not standard English,
its conventions are established by its speakers.
Now look at this description from Willa Cather’s “A
Wagner Matinee” (page 718), in which the narrator recalls the
Nebraska farm where he grew up. Notice the harshness and
the lack of color in the setting described; both the landscape
and the evidence of human habitation are black, pitted,
and bare.
I saw again the tall, naked house on the prairie, black and
grim as a wooden fortress; the black pond where I had learned
to swim, its margin pitted with sun-dried cattle tracks; the rain
gullied clay banks about the naked house, the four dwarf ash
seedlings where the dish-cloths were always hung to dry before
the kitchen door.
Prospectors pan for gold during the gold
rush, 1889.
In 1868, a popular story about the California
gold rush—Bret Harte’s “The Luck of Roaring
Camp”—launched a specific form of regional
writing called local color writing. Mark
Twain, with his memorable characters, was a
master of this form. Other local color realists
of the time include Joel Chandler Harris in
the South and Sarah Orne Jewett and Mary
Wilkins Freeman in New England. Later
regional writers, such as Willa Cather, William
Faulkner, and Flannery O’Connor, developed
sophisticated ways of making universal
statements about the human condition while
focusing on the local and the particular.
Close Read
What feeling about life on
the frontier do you get from
the description? How could
you rewrite the passage to
change that feeling?
—Willa Cather, “A Wagner Matinee”
In regional literature, setting, characters, and plot are
usually inseparable. As you read regional writing, notice the
relationship between the characters and the setting. Ask
yourself how the characters react to the setting. Then decide
how this relationship is significant to the story’s plot.
text analysis workshop
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