Regional literature particularizes each fact of the nature and human enviorenment peculiar to the selected locale. Henry james reviewing the Southern fiction to the American writers Constance Fenimore Woolson (1840-94) praised her familiarity with the natural objects of the region and observed the “She knows every plant and flower, every vague odor and sound, the song and flight of every bird, every tint of sky and murmur of the forest and she had noted scientifically the didlect of the (Negro) freedom.
So, loacal colour and dialect are two constant features of regional writings. Local colours need not be limited to natural descrition, but also includes the realistic delienation of all sensory perceptions of the geographic and social milieu including mores, floklore, the economic life of the region, all the modifications of Senviorenment; and theimpact of the several classes of society upon each other. Theough varifying from region to region, dialect is the liguistic determinent of regional idiosyncrasy reflecting the distinctiveness of liofe in a delimated area.
No linguistic ‘Criteria’ can define literary regionalism which exactitude. The same os true of socialigical and geographical criteria. The regional novel is a paralled but opposite fictional form to the novel of “The young man from the provinces”. In the latter the young man leaves the provinces for the more complex life of the city. In the regional novel he stays on te farm, in the village or factory, in his own unique regional culture.
Thus we can distingush the different attitudes toward provincial materials in such regional writings as Sarah orne jewett’s The country of the pointed fears (1896). The stories that compose this novel are narrated by a nameless female narrator, who tells us about humble old men and women in a small community facing sea. Their days turn in rhythm with seasons.
Local colour Movement started after the Union Victory in Civil War in 1860s. the literary impulse towards regional expression accordingly took a new rationate while sactionalism as suspect. A sense of Vastness of the continent and of the cutural diversity gave impetus to the regional writings. In New England H.B. Stowe (1811-96), author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin inagurated local colour writinfs, depicting simple village life of the 19th C. The Southern Local colour writing was represented by thomson Nelson page’s in Old Virginia (1887). New Orleans life provided exotic materials The Grandissmies (1880) by G.W. Cable.
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