Topics in Modern American Fiction: The Local Color Movement
Robert Regan profile
MWF 2-3
From the years after the Civil war forward, some American writers--
most of them men--have attempted to produce what one of them called
"The Great American Novel," the expansive fiction that brings
together characters from all regions, classes, and ethnic groups to
explore the possibility of our becoming one culture. The title of
John Dos Passos' USA proclaims it an example of that epic enterprise.
Another enterprise developed in the same period, a more modest
enterprise in which women figure conspiciously: The Local Color
Movement. Place--one single, particular place--assumes a role equal
to that of character in the short stories and short novels of the
movement. Its program is to humanize regions for the national
literary audience. The local color authors we shall read will include
Mark Twain, Sarah Orne Jewett, Willa Cather, Zora Neal Hurston,
William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, Flannery O'Connor, Grace Paley, and
several others. Class participation will count heavily in this
seminar: most class discussions will be led by students, but I will
occasionally reserve a class for presenting a bit of theory and some
summary of critical opinion. I shall expect about twenty pages of
critical writing from you, but you may decide whether it should be
submitted in several short papers or one long one.
updated 2006-03-29
