Realism
Regionalism & Local Color
1865-1920
What is realism?
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Broadly defined, a literary technique
devoted to "the faithful representation
of reality"
A reaction against romanticism
Sparked by an interest in the scientific
method, the systematizing of the
study of documentary history, and the
influence of rational philosophy
Realist writers …
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Endeavored to accurately represent contemporary
culture and people from all walks of life
Addressed themes of socioeconomic conflict by
contrasting the living conditions of the poor with
those of the upper classes in urban as well as rural
societies
Sought to narrate their novels from an objective,
unbiased perspective that simply and clearly
represented the factual elements of the story
Became masters at psychological characterization,
detailed descriptions of everyday life in realistic
settings, and dialogue that captures the idioms of
natural human speech
Some Key Influences
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Rapid growth after the Civil War
Increasing rates of democracy and literacy
Rapid growth in industrialism and
urbanization
An expanding population base due to
immigration
A relative rise in middle-class affluence
Interest in understanding these rapid shifts
in culture
Concern about loss of personal identity
Local Color/Regional Literature
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Local color or regional literature
focuses on the characters, dialect,
customs, topography, and other
features particular to a specific region.
Between the Civil War and the end of
the nineteenth century, this mode of
writing became dominant in American
literature.
Local Color
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According to the Oxford Companion to
American Literature, "In local-color literature
one finds the dual influence of romanticism
and realism, since the author frequently
looks away from ordinary life to distant
lands, strange customs, or exotic scenes,
but retains through minute detail a sense of
fidelity and accuracy of description" (439).
Regional Literature
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Regional literature incorporates the broader
concept of sectional differences within a
locale.
For example, in The Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain makes use of
seven distinct dialects to represent the
differences of various groups living in the
region.
Impacts
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Contributed to the reunification of the
country after the Civil War
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Helped build a national identity
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Contributed to the narrative of unified
nationhood that late nineteenthcentury America sought to construct
Regionalism in Art
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Regionalism is a realist modern American art
movement wherein artists shunned the city
and rapidly developing technological
advances to focus on scenes of rural life
Regionalist style was at its height from 1930
to 1935.
During the Great Depression of the 1930s,
Regionalist art was widely appreciated for
its reassuring images of the American
heartland.
“We introduced America to Americans."
--Roy Stryker, Regionalist Photographer
Shared Characteristics in Local
Color & Regional Literature
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Setting
Characters
Narrator
Plots
Themes
Setting
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The emphasis is
frequently on nature
and the limitations it
imposes; settings are
frequently remote and
inaccessible. The
setting is integral to
the story and may
sometimes become a
character in itself.
Characters
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Local color stories tend to be concerned
with the character of the district or region
rather than with the individual: characters
may become character types, sometimes
quaint or stereotypical.
The characters are marked by their
adherence to the old ways, by dialect, and
by particular personality traits central to the
region.
Narrator
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The narrator is typically an educated
observer from the world beyond who learns
something from the characters while
preserving a sometimes sympathetic,
sometimes ironic distance from them.
The narrator serves as mediator between
the rural folk of the tale and the urban
audience to whom the tale is directed.
Plots
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It has been said that
"nothing happens" in
local color stories by
women authors, and
often very little does
happen.
Stories may include
lots of storytelling and
revolve around the
community and its
rituals.
Themes
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Many local color stories share an antipathy to change and a
nostalgia for an always-past golden age. Thematic tension or
conflict between urban ways and old-fashioned rural values is
often symbolized by the intrusion of an outsider or interloper
who seeks something from the community.
Shared Techniques
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Use of dialect to establish credibility and
authenticity of regional characters.
Use of detailed description, especially of
small, seemingly insignificant details central
to an understanding of the region.
Frequent use of a frame story in which the
narrator hears some tale of the region.
Famous Practitioners …
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Mark Twain
Bret Harte
Hamlin Garland
Joel Chandler Harris
William Faulkner
William Styron
Robert Frost
Sinclair Lewis
Henry James
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John Steinbeck
Dashiell Hammett
Kate Chopin
Harriet Beecher
Stowe
Eudora Welty
Sarah Orne Jewett
Willa Cather
Harper Lee
Samuel Langhorne Clemens
(1835-1910)
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Samuel Langhorne Clemens,
aka. Mark Twain, was a
natural-born storyteller who
was the first writer to
recognize that art could be
created out of the American
language.
Through his use of carefully
chosen words and his sharply
honed humor, he dealt head-on
with controversial issues that
others were afraid to confront.
Mark Twain’s Writing Advice
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“Whatever you have
lived, you can write –
& by hard work & a
genuine apprenticeship,
you can learn to write
well; but what you have
not lived you cannot
write, you can only
pretend to write it...”
“An Enormous Noticer”
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Mark Twain is described as “an enormous noticer.”
Much of what he noticed as a boy growing up in
the small Mississippi River town of Hannibal,
Missouri, found its way into his writings in books
such as The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
He was always noticing whether people had their
hands in their pockets or not, how they dressed,
walked, spoke or presented themselves to others.
Consider this passage from the first
chapter of Tom Sawyer, for example:
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“A stranger was before him – boy a shade larger
than himself... This boy was well-dressed, too welldressed on a week-day. This was simply
astounding. His cap was a dainty thing, his closebuttoned blue cloth roundabout was new and natty,
and so were his pantaloons. He had shoes on–and
it was only Friday. He even wore a necktie, a bright
bit of ribbon. He had a citified air about him that
ate into Tom’s vitals.”
Now, close your eyes …
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What am I wearing?
What is currently hanging on the back
bulletin board?
What color are the walls in this room?
How many book shelves are in this room?
Are there more boys or girls in this class?
What object is sitting above the white board
on the left side?
Twain’s First Success
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"The Celebrated Jumping
Frog of Calaveras County"
(1865) was Twain’s first
great success as a writer,
bringing him national
attention.
In it, the narrator retells a
story he heard from a
bartender at the Angels
Hotel in Angels Camp,
California, about the
gambler Jim Smiley and his
“celebrated jumping frog”.
How he got started …
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Twain began his career as a journalist,
travel writer, and writer of light, humorous
verse.
He evolved into a chronicler of the vanities,
hypocrisies. and murderous acts of
mankind, making frequent use of satire.
At mid-career, with Huckleberry Finn, he
combined rich humor, sturdy narrative and
social criticism.
What is satire?
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A literary genre or form in which vices, follies, abuses,
and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the
intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into
improvement.
Although satire is usually meant to be funny, its greater
purpose is often constructive social criticism, using wit
as a weapon.
A common feature of satire is strong irony or sarcasm; it
also makes frequent use of parody, burlesque, analogy,
exaggeration, juxtaposition, and double entendre.
Modern Examples: Animal Farm; Fahrenheit 451; Lord
of the Flies; Saturday Night Live, “Doonesbury,” John
Stewart; Stephen Colbert; The Simpsons; South Park
Twain on Humor …
“Humor must not
professedly teach,
and it must not
professedly preach,
but it must do both
if it would live
forever.”
– Mark Twain
Most Famous Books
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The Innocents
Abroad
Roughing It
The Adventures of
Tom Sawyer
The Prince and the
Pauper
Life on the
Mississippi
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The Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn
A Connecticut
Yankee in King
Arthur’s Court
The Tragedy of
Pudd’nhead Wilson
A Burlesque
Autobiography
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
– a prequel to Huckleberry Finn
Twain’s Use of Dialect
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Twain was a master at rendering colloquial
speech and helped to create and popularize
a distinctive American literature built on
American themes and language.
In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,
Twain uses seven different dialects and
even provides an explanation for doing so …
Twain’s “EXPLANATORY”
“IN this book a number of dialects are used, to
wit: the Missouri negro dialect; the extremest form
of the backwoods Southwestern dialect; the
ordinary "Pike County" dialect; and four modified
varieties of this last. The shadings have not been
done in a haphazard fashion, or by guesswork; but
painstakingly, and with the trustworthy guidance
and support of personal familiarity with these
several forms of speech.
I make this explanation for the reason that without
it many readers would suppose that all these
characters were trying to talk alike and not
succeeding.”
Missouri Negro: Jim
“Goodness gracious, is dat you, Huck? En
you ain’ dead-you ain’t drownded-you’s back
ag’in? It’s too good for true, honey, it’s too
good for true. Lemme look at you chile,
lemme feel o’ you. No, you ain’ dead! you’s
back ag’in, ‘live en soun’, jis de same ole
Huck-de same ole Huck, thanks to
goodness!”
Extremist form of the backwoods
Southwestern dialect:
Arkansas Gossips (Sister Hotchkiss)
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“Look at that-air grindstone, s’I; want
to tell me’t any cretur ‘t’s in his right
mind’s a-goin’ to scrabble all them
crazy things onto a grindstone? s’I.”
Ordinary “Pike County”: Huck
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“My folks was living in Pike County, in
Missouri, where I was born, and they
all died off but me and pa and my
brother Ike.”
Modified “Pike County”: King
“Well, I’d ben a-runnin’ a little
temperence revival thar ‘bout a week .
. . and business a-growin’ all the time,
when somehow or another a little
report got around last night that I had
a way of puttin’ in my time with a
private jug on the sly.”
Huck as Narrator
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The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was a
breakthrough in American literature for its
presentation of Huck Finn, an adolescent
boy who tells the story in his own language.
The novel was one of the first in America to
employ the child's perspective and employ
the vernacular — a language specific to a
region or group of people—throughout the
book.
Unique Perspective
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Huck's unique perspective is that of a
lower-class, southern white child, who has
been viewed as an outcast by society.
From this position, Huck narrates the story
of his encounters with various southern
types, sometimes revealing his naivete and,
at other times, his acute ability to see
through the hypocrisy of his elders.
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Realist and
Regionalist
techniques are
exemplified in
The Adventures
of Huckleberry Finn
by the specific
and richly detailed
setting …
… and the novel's
insistence on dialect
which attempts to
reproduce the
natural speech of a
variety of
characters unique
to the Mississippi
Valley region.
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In addition, Huck's
momentous decision to
free Jim, even if it
means going to hell, is
seen as a classic
episode of Realist
fiction because it
demonstrates the
individual's struggle to
make choices based on
inner motivations,
rather than outside
forces.
Twain’s Warning:
Many wonder if he really meant that since
Huck goes through a major metamorphosis
in his thinking about Jim …
On Race …
“ I have no race
prejudices, and I think I
have no color prejudices
nor caste prejudices nor
creed prejudices. Indeed
I know it... All that I care
to know is that a man is
a human being – that is
enough for me.”
– Mark Twain
Early Experiences
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Black people and black voices were part of Twain’s
life from the beginning. Every summer as a child
Sam spent several weeks on his uncle’s farm,
where an old slave called “Uncle Daniel” thrilled the
youngsters with ghost stories.
One of his most lasting childhood memories was
not so pleasant. It was of a dozen men and
women, chained together, waiting to be shipped
down-river to the slave market. “They had,” he
said, “the saddest faces I ever saw.”
Controversy/Book Banning
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The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, first published
in 1884, was controversial from the start. In 1885,
Concord Public Library banned the book.
Mark Twain wrote to Charles Webster on March 18,
1885: "The Committee of the Public Library of
Concord, Mass., have given us a rattling tip-top puff
which will go into every paper in the country. They
have expelled Huck from their library as 'trash and
suitable only for the slums.' That will sell 25,000
copies for us sure."
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In 1902, the Brooklyn Public Library banned
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn with
the statement that "Huck not only itched
but he scratched," and that he said "sweat"
when he should have said "perspiration."
Modern Day Issues
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In general, the debate over Twain's The Adventures
of Huckleberry Finn has centered around the
language of the book, which has been objected to
on social grounds, specifically for its repeated use
of the “N” word, which was in common usage in the
pre-Civil War period in which the novel was set.
Yielding to public pressure, some textbook
publishers have substituted "slave" or "servant" for
the term that Mark Twain uses in the book, which
has been considered derogatory to African
Americans.
The “N” Word
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Comes from the Latin adjective meaning “black” (niger)
and the Spanish/Portuguese word for black (negro)
“Used rightly or wrongly, ironically or seriously, of
necessity for the sake of realism, or impishly for the
sake of comedy, it doesn't matter. Negroes do not like it
in any book or play whatsoever, be the book or play
ever so sympathetic in its treatment of the basic
problems of the race. Even though the book or play is
written by a Negro, they still do not like it. The word
nigger, you see, sums up for us who are colored all the
bitter years of insult and struggle in America.”
- Langston Hughes
Others see it as the greatest and
most important American novel …
"All modern American literature comes
from one book by Mark Twain called
Huckleberry Finn."
- Ernest Hemingway, Green Hills of
Africa