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Short stories and sketches about America’s various regional cultures – from New England to the Far West – became increasingly popular during the last quarter of the nineteenth century, filling the pages of such literary magazines as Century, Harper’s, or Vogue (yes, the very same Vogue that you can still buy today). While some people say that readers enjoyed these stories because they allowed them to go “armchair travelling” to exotic and quaint places, others consider the local color craze a reaction to either the growing industrialization and urbanization of the U.S. or to the mass immigration from Europe and Asia. In this seminar we will discuss these various theories as well as learn about short story theory in general, but mostly we will read and analyze a wide variety of local color stories, from Sarah Orne Jewett’s Country of the Pointed Firs (1896) to Sui Sin Far’s Mrs. Spring Fragrance (1912). |
