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The Gothic Tradition In Southern Local Color Fiction, Lucia Ann Stretcher Sigmar

Doctoral Dissertations

The American local color movement, roughly spanning the end of the Civil War to the turn of the century, attempted to preserve traditional regional lifestyles which were in danger of disappearing entirely in a rapidly expanding, increasingly hegemonic society. Historically, local color fiction has been dismissed as too narrowly focused, too nostalgically charged, too stylistically detailed, too lacking in "literary" merit, too quaint, too insignificant to warrant serious, critical investigation. Critics have typically regarded the movement as a subdivision of regionalism, and have privileged the fiction's characteristic adherence to realistic detail (dialect, folklore, character types, and regional setting) above all …