Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-7bb8b95d7b-wpx69 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-10-06T11:44:13.590Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 15 - Regional Stories and the Environmental Imagination

from Part III - People and Places

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 May 2023

Michael J. Collins
Affiliation:
King's College London
Gavin Jones
Affiliation:
Stanford University
Get access

Summary

Even when valorized for a political imagination that drew attention to the marginalized spaces and communities of a rapidly changing postbellum United States, regionalism (or “local color”) literature was long considered to be merely minor: written from and about sites marginal to the centers of culture and power, primarily by women, and appearing most prominently in the modest form of the short story or sketch. This essay reframes the regionalist short story through a renewed attention to its environmental representation, especially by attending to the genre’s questions of scale: the relation between region, nation, and globe; modernity and its relationship to a preindustrial past; the limitations and constraints of a minor form. Through discussions of Sarah Orne Jewett, Mary Murfree, Bret Harte, and others, this essay argues that the regionalist short story’s environmental imagination decenters the human, while also revealing the co-constitution of a region and its literary archive.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Chesnutt, Charles W. 1993. The Conjure Woman and Other Conjure Tales. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Crane, Stephen. 1963. The Complete Short Stories and Sketches of Stephen Crane. Ed. Gullason, Thomas A.. New York: Doubleday.Google Scholar
Dorman, Robert L. 2012. Hell of a Vision: Regionalism and the Modern American West. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.Google Scholar
Edelman, Lee. 2004. No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive. Raleigh, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Ensor, Sarah. 2012. “Spinster Ecology: Rachel Carson, Sarah Orne Jewett, and Nonreproductive Futurity,” American Literature 84.2: 409435.Google Scholar
Far, Sui Sin. 1995. Mrs. Spring Fragrance and Other Writings. Eds. Ling, Amy and White-Parks, Annette. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Fetterley, Judith and Pryse, Marjorie. 2003. Writing out of Place: Regionalism, Women, and American Literary Culture. Champaign: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Garland, Hamlin. 1960. “Local Color in Art,” in Crumbling Idols: Twelve Essays on Art Dealing Chiefly with Literature, Painting, and the Drama. Ed. Johnson, Jane, 4958. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Harris, Joel Chandler. 1955. The Complete Tales of Uncle Remus. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.Google Scholar
Harte, Francis Bret. 1870. The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Sketches. Boston: Fields, Osgood, and Co.Google Scholar
Howard, June. 2018. The Center of the World: Regional Writing and the Puzzles of Place-Time. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Jewett, Sarah Orne. 1890. “In Dark New England Days,” in Strangers and Wayfarers, 220256. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.Google Scholar
Jewett, Sarah Orne. 1994. Novels and Stories. New York: Library of America.Google Scholar
King, Grace. 1893. Balcony Stories. New York: The Century Co.Google Scholar
Kuhn, Mary. 2021. “Chesnutt, Turpentine, and the Political Ecology of White Supremacy,” PMLA 136.1: 3954.Google Scholar
Parrington, Vernon Louis. 1930. The Beginnings of Critical Realism in America: 1860-1920. New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Co.Google Scholar
Wilkins, Mary E. 1884. “On the Walpole Road,” Harper’s Bazar 17.6: 8687.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×