Local Color vs. Regionalism

The short story is the most distinguished genre of local color writing. Its emphasis on locale helped Americans after the Civil War know the various sections of their country and their special history, such as New England, the Old Southwest, the Middle West, and the Western frontier. Speech, especially dialect, dress, customs, mannerisms, habits of thought, and topography peculiar to the setting are usually rendered in detail and thus emphasize the verisimilitude of realism. However, its emphasis on eccentric characters, including larger than life legendary characters, on sentimental pathos, on violence and brutality, and on humor both whimsical and grotesque reveals it to be concerned about entertainment, not the truth of the larger aspects of life.

Unlike its counterpart, regionalism is a 20^th as well as a 19^th century movement. Like its counterpart it presents a particular geographical section with fidelity and habits, speech, manners, history, folklore, and beliefs with accuracy. However, it generally differs in that it lays less stress upon quaint oddities of dialect, manners, and costume and more on basic philosophical or sociological distinctions. The writers in this movement, like cultural anthropologists, contend that as people adapt their lives to the geography of a region, they create an economic system appropriate for its environment. This system in turn becomes aesthetic (cultural). Broad examples of this process are the industrial North and the agrarian South; specific examples are Henry James’ New Yorkers and William Faulkner’s Mississippians.