Local-Colour Literature and Cultural Nations

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Part of the Palgrave Studies in Modern European Literature book series (PMEL)

Abstract

Instead of following the time-honoured organisation of literatures around nations or empires, I propose in this article that a more accurate mapping of the worldwide literary landscape would draw attention to cultural ‘nations’, that is separate regional locales that have their own dialects, cultures, histories, ethnic identities and literatures, independent of the dominant national or imperial discourse. Nineteenth-century local-colour literatures are rooted in just such cultural regions, located on the margins of their respective nations, in places such as Emmental, Swabia, Westphalia, Bohemia, Alsace, Languedoc, the Scottish Highlands, Western Ireland or Ulster, and rural areas of New England. Each of these regions had their own unique culture, traditions and dialects, forming thus a separate cultural ‘nation’.

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Notes

Acknowledgements

An early version of this article was presented as a paper at the 2014 American Comparative Literature Association meeting in New York City, in a seminar organised by Richard Hibbitt. My thanks to Dr Hibbitt and other seminar participants for their stimulating comments. A more extensive discussion of the issues raised in this article may be found in my European Local-Color Literature (2010). Unless otherwise noted, all translations are mine.

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Copyright information

© The Author(s) 2017

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.University of MaineOronoUSA

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