Notes on Regionalism

General Notes:

• Regionalism is a broader concept of sectional differences
• Emphasizes a special geographical setting and concentrates upon the history, manners, and folkways of the area as these help to shape the lives or behaviors of the characters
• Fidelity in literature to a particular geographic setting/section
• Accurate representation of its habits, speech, mannerisms, history, folklore, or beliefs
• Differs from local color in that it lays less stress upon the quaint oddities of dialect, mannerisms, and costume, and more on basic philosophical or sociological distinctions
• The writer might be likened to a cultural anthropologist
• Test of regionalism is that the action and personages of a work called regional cannot be moved, without major loss or distortion, to any other geographical setting

(Notes taken from Hart’s The Oxford Companion to American Literature and Holman and Harmon’s A Handbook to Literature)