1. Regionalism
Late 1800s

2. Preview
Read p. 619 in your textbook.
You have 4 minutes.

3. Huge Regionalist Writers:
Bret Harte
Mark Twain

4. 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

5. *Place/Setting is integral to the story itself
*Writers wanted to record and celebrate the vast diversity of American landscape and it’s people
*Place/Setting is integral to the story itself

6. 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

7. Example of Vernacular(Local Color):
“cal’klated to edercate”= calculated to educate

8. 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.

9. Regionalism? Yes/No?

10. Regionalism? Yes/No?

11. Regionalism? Yes/No?

12. Regionalism? Yes/No?

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

14. The Outcasts of Poker Flat
Characterization= The process by which a writer reveals the personality of a character
Direct Characterization
By directly stating what the character is like
Indirect Characterization
By describing the character’s thoughts, words, actions
By showing how other characters react to him or her

15. 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?