Local-colour literature and cultural nations

Josephine Donovan

pp. 33-50

in: Richard Hibbitt (ed), Other capitals of the nineteenth century, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017

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".