The document discusses how two major 19th century American literary currents - frontier humor and local color (or regionalism) - merged in the works of Mark Twain, using exaggeration and tall tales of colorful frontier characters to capture regional dialects and experiences. It also outlines how writers like George Cable, Thomas Nelson Page, Joel Chandler Harris, Mary Murfree, Sarah Jewett, O. Henry, and others contributed to the tradition of local color regionalism in American literature through focusing on distinctive regional settings, dialects, and minority experiences.

1. Frontier humor
«local color»
«regionalism»

2. 
Two major literary currents in
19th-century America merged
in Mark Twain: popular
frontier humor and local color,
or "regionalism." These related
literary approaches began in
the 1830s — and had even
earlier roots in local oral
traditions.

3. 
 Exaggeration, tall tales, incredible boasts,
and comic workingmen heroes enlivened
frontier literature. These humorous forms
were found in many frontier regions — in the
"old Southwest", the mining frontier, and the
Pacific Coast

4. 
 Each region had its colorful characters around whom
stories collected: Mike Fink, the Mississippi riverboat
brawler; Casey Jones, the brave railroad engineer;
John Henry, the steel-driving African-American;
Paul Bunyan, the giant logger whose fame was
helped along by advertising; westerners Kit Carson,
the Indian fighter, and Davy Crockett, the scout.
Their exploits were exaggerated and enhanced in
ballads, newspapers, and magazines. Sometimes, as
with Kit Carson and Davy Crockett, these stories
were strung together into book form.

5. 
Twain, Faulkner, and many other writers,
particularly southerners, are indebted to
frontier pre-Civil War humorists such as
Johnson Hooper, George Washington Harris,
Augustus Longstreet, Thomas Bangs Thorpe,
and Joseph Baldwin.

6. 
 From them and the American frontier folk came the
wild proliferation of comical new American words:
"absquatulate" (leave), "flabbergasted" (amazed),
"rampagious" (unruly, rampaging). Local boasters, or
"ring-tailed roarers," who asserted they were half
horse, half alligator, also underscored the boundless
energy of the frontier.

7.  Twain's style – influenced by
journalism, wedded to the
vernacular, direct and
unadorned but also highly
evocative and irreverently
humorous – changed the way
Americans write their
language. His characters
speak like real people and
sound distinctively American,
using local dialects, newly
invented words, and regional
accents.

8. 
In 1879, thanks to the novel «Old
Creoles Day» Cable gained fame in
the American literary world.
Other writers interested in regional differences
and dialect were: George W. Cable

9. 
 He served as Woodrow
Wilson's ambassador to Italy,
and the president referred to
him as a "national ornament"
Thomas Nelson Page

10. 
"Uncle Remus stories".
His Songs and His Sayings
was published near the end of
1880. Hundreds of newspapers
reviewed the best-seller, and
Harris received national
attention.
Joel Chandler Harris

11. 
 By the 1870s she had
begun writing stories for
Appleton's Journal under
the penname of "Charles
Egbert Craddock"
Mary Noailles Murfree

12. 
Sarah Orne Jewett
She published her first
important story in the
Atlantic Monthly at age
19, and her reputation
grew throughout the
1870s and 1880s.

13. 
O. Henry's short stories
are known for their wit,
wordplay, warm
characterization, and
surprise endings.
William Sydney Porter
(O. Henry)

14. 
A version of local color regionalism that
focused on minority experiences can be seen
in the works of Charles W. Chesnutt (African
American), of María Ruiz de Burton, one of
the earliest Mexican American novelists to
write in English, and in the Yiddish-inflected
works of Abraham Cahan.

15. 
 1. What is frontier humor and local color?
 2. What are filled with Twain’s stories?
 3. What humorous forms used representatives of
frontier humor and “local color” in their creations?
 4. Name representatives of “local color” and
regionalism.
 5. What contributed representatives of local color in
American letters?
Questions

16. 