A Systematic Study of Regionalism in American Literature

The present investigator, Hisao TANAKA, has tried to explore the literary representations of the major four regions in the United States from the viewpoint of regionalism-the traditionally demarcated regions, that is, the East, the South, the Midwest, and the West. However, TANAKA has met the same difficulty as did J.M.Cox, who confesses in an essay, "Regionalism : A Diminished Thing," included in the Columbia Literary History of the United States (1988) that "it [the West] is all future and mobility-it is America," and therefore has not duly pursued his plan of study he originally proposed to this project. Still TANAKA attempted to see the four regions on equal terms, keenly conscious of the persistence of the preconceived view that historically the East has had a cultural hegemony over the other regions. Yet, his concern is so greatly with William Faulkner and his region, the South, that the tendency to study it more than the other regions could not be fully avoided. However, he has endeavored to bring into his consideration the three pivotal critical points of view-gender, class, and race-and also paid due attention to such elements as religion, ethnicity, or age. Also, he sought to refer to the important critical works like The Geopolitical Aesthetic (1995) by F.Jameson and The Location of Culture (1994) by H.K.Bhabha. Thus the researcher has studied the interconnection of composite forces of the identity or image each region has historically and socially internalized, whether consciously or unconsciously, and of the identity or image which has been given to each region, whether it likes it or not, by such external mass media as literature, movies, or photographs. Indeed, regional characteristics are undoubtedly diminishing, but it is still generally true that the East retains, though to a lesser degree than before, Puritan sensibility and reminiscences about its idyllic past ; that, though resurrected from the past ordeal of the Civil Rights Movement and in the process of gradual change, the South is still a homogeneous terrain ; that the Midwest has been proudly buttressing its egalitarian spirit, with heterogeneous mobility ; that the West is always future-oriented, though R.Carver's country is quite different from such scenery.