Local Color
Southern local color in the post-Reconstruction era provided the region with one of its most effective pathways back into national prominence through its appeal to northern curiosity and nostalgia. Like other regional varieties, southern local color could both celebrate the way that different cultur...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Emory Center for Digital Scholarship
2004-02-01
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| Series: | Southern Spaces |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://southernspaces.org/node/42377 |
| _version_ | 1818110336072417280 |
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| author | Lucinda MacKethan |
| author_facet | Lucinda MacKethan |
| author_sort | Lucinda MacKethan |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Southern local color in the post-Reconstruction era provided the region with one of its most effective pathways back into national prominence through its appeal to northern curiosity and nostalgia. Like other regional varieties, southern local color could both celebrate the way that different cultures affirmed nationally favored similarities, and it could also make separatist claims more palatable through the charming presentation of difference. A regional affinity for this genre grew out of the South's plentiful unusual accents and vernacular vocabularies and its association in the national mind with a unique plantation economic base. Most importantly, the South had race, America's most visible metaphor of human difference, so that southern practitioners of local color, writing out of backwoods Georgia, James River plantation Virginia, or Creole New Orleans could adapt regional peculiarities of all kinds to plots that frequently hinged on one favored peculiarity, racial difference. |
| first_indexed | 2024-12-11T02:45:31Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-e69d80669a724d24b8e4253086e6f09d |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 1551-2754 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-12-11T02:45:31Z |
| publishDate | 2004-02-01 |
| publisher | Emory Center for Digital Scholarship |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Southern Spaces |
| spelling | doaj.art-e69d80669a724d24b8e4253086e6f09d2022-12-22T01:23:27ZengEmory Center for Digital ScholarshipSouthern Spaces1551-27542004-02-0110.18737/M7VP4QLocal ColorLucinda MacKethan0North Carolina State UniversitySouthern local color in the post-Reconstruction era provided the region with one of its most effective pathways back into national prominence through its appeal to northern curiosity and nostalgia. Like other regional varieties, southern local color could both celebrate the way that different cultures affirmed nationally favored similarities, and it could also make separatist claims more palatable through the charming presentation of difference. A regional affinity for this genre grew out of the South's plentiful unusual accents and vernacular vocabularies and its association in the national mind with a unique plantation economic base. Most importantly, the South had race, America's most visible metaphor of human difference, so that southern practitioners of local color, writing out of backwoods Georgia, James River plantation Virginia, or Creole New Orleans could adapt regional peculiarities of all kinds to plots that frequently hinged on one favored peculiarity, racial difference.https://southernspaces.org/node/42377African American StudiesLiterary CriticismRegional StudiesWhiteness Studies |
| spellingShingle | Lucinda MacKethan Local Color Southern Spaces African American Studies Literary Criticism Regional Studies Whiteness Studies |
| title | Local Color |
| title_full | Local Color |
| title_fullStr | Local Color |
| title_full_unstemmed | Local Color |
| title_short | Local Color |
| title_sort | local color |
| topic | African American Studies Literary Criticism Regional Studies Whiteness Studies |
| url | https://southernspaces.org/node/42377 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT lucindamackethan localcolor |