RegionalismLate 1800s

Preview

• Read p. 619 in your textbook. • You have 4 minutes.

Huge Regionalist Writers:

1) Bret Harte

2) Mark Twain

Regionalism•Embraces not the universal but the particular•Focuses 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 area•Two huge regionalist writers:•Mark Twain•Bret Hart

*Writers wanted to record and celebrate the vast diversity of American landscape and it’s people

*Place/Setting is integral to the story itself

Local Color= unusual traditional features of a

particular place that make it interesting•Writers of local color use writing to “paint” local scenes•Vernacular= • 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

Example of Vernacular(Local Color):

“cal’klated to edercate”= calculated to educate

Why might 19th century readers have been especially receptive to regionalist and local-color writing?

Readers were able to identify with the characters because they behaved and sounded like people they encountered in their everyday live.

Regionalism? Yes/No?

Regionalism? Yes/No?

Regionalism? Yes/No?

Regionalism? Yes/No?

Unit Vocabulary• Jocular * Protruding• Impropriety * Intangible• Conjectured * Apprehensive• Dilapidated * Imperative• Inanimate * Renown• Serenely * Incessantly• Conspicuous• Vacant• Feverish

The Outcasts of Poker Flat

• Characterization= The process by which a writer reveals the personality of a character

1) Direct Characterization1) By directly stating what the character is like

2) Indirect Characterization1) By describing the character’s thoughts, words, actions2) By showing how other characters react to him or her

Exit Slip

• Why might nineteenth-century readers have been especially receptive to regionalist and local-color writing?

• In your opinion, which qualities of regionalism might most appeal to today’s readers?