American Literature / Unit 11 AML 1042 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
Sorting a Realist From a Regionalist
The idea
The board asks what Jewett, Chopin and Twain are sometimes called, and the answer is regionalists, but the sorting is worth doing properly because realist and regionalist overlap. Ask three questions. First, is the place replaceable: if the story could happen in any comparable town without loss, it is realism, and if the speech, work and customs of one particular place are the subject, it is regionalism. Second, is there a dialect the text takes seriously: regionalists transcribe local speech carefully and often frame the tale through a visitor who does not speak it. Third, what is being preserved: regionalism usually carries an elegiac note about a way of life ending, which straight realism does not need. Twain, Jewett, Chopin, Harte and Freeman all satisfy these; Howells and James do not, because their subject is a class and a set of manners rather than a locality.
In practice
Replaceable place, transcribed speech, and elegy.
Where people slip
Naturalism is the trap answer here, since it also deals in ordinary people. Naturalism adds a thesis about force and heredity, which none of these three writers is making.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
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