Local Color

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The setting plays major role in prose fiction. The dialect spoken, the customs observed, the dress code prevalent, and the way of living all can be peculiar to a particular region. This sort of setting is called a local color of the area or region. You must have come across such peculiarity of an area while reading a prose or a novel.
Such beautiful local color called "Wessex" (present-day Dorset) is painted by Thomas Hardy in his novels. If you read a wide range of his novels, the Wessex will emerge in front of your mind 's eye - so beautiful, so vivid! Rudyard Kipling 's India also shares the same local color. R. K. Narayan beautifully portrays the imaginary village of "Malgudi" - set somewhere in South India - in his novels.
The representation of the local shade or color continues emerging in the writings of several writers. After the Civil War, many American writers used the local color of America. For instance, the various parts of America just as the Mississippi region was used by Mark Twain, the south by George Washington Cable, the Midwest by E. W. Howe, the West by Bret Harte, and New England by Mary Wilkins Freeman and the Sarah Orne Jewett.
The writing concerned with the local colour focuses mainly on the particularity of the area. It is basically about the comic or sentimental representation of the surface distinctiveness of a region. It does not represent the deep, complex and the generalized characteristics and problems of the region.
It is the powerful representation of the local color in the novels, the Wessex in Hardy 's novels, and the Malgudi in R. K. Narayan 's novels have become immortal in the history of literature!
Rakesh Patel is an aspiring poet, freelance writer, self-published author and teacher. Read his blog http://typesofpoetry99.blogspot.com/
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Local Color in Literature
By Rakesh Ramubhai Patel http://public.wsu.edu/~campbelld/amlit/lcolor.html Regionalism and Local Color Fiction, 1865-1895

Regionalism and Local Color Bibliography Local color or regional literature is fiction and poetry that focuses on the characters, dialect, customs, topography, and other features particular to a specific region. Influenced by Southwestern and Down East humor, between the Civil War and the end of the nineteenth century this mode of writing became dominant in American literature. According to the Oxford Companion to American Literature, "In local-color literature one finds the dual influence of romanticism and realism, since the author frequently looks away from ordinary life to distant lands, strange customs, or exotic scenes, but retains through minute detail a sense of fidelity and accuracy of description" (439). Its weaknesses may include nostalgia or sentimentality. Its customary form is the sketch or short story, although Hamlin Garland argued for the novel of local color. Regional literature incorporates the broader concept of sectional differences, although in Writing Out of Place, Judith Fetterley and Marjorie Pryse have argued convincingly that the distinguishing characteristic that separates "local color" writers from "regional" writers is instead the exploitation of and condescension toward their subjects that the local color writers demonstrate. One definition of the difference between realism and local color is Eric Sundquist 's: "Economic or political power can itself be seen to be definitive of a realist aesthetic, in that those in power (say, white urban males) have been more often judged 'realists, ' while those removed from the seats of power (say, Midwesterners, blacks, immigrants, or women) have been categorized as regionalists." See also the definition from the Encyclopedia of Southern Literature. Many critics, including Amy Kaplan ("Nation, Region, and Empire" in the Columbia Literary History of the United States) and Richard Brodhead (Cultures of Letters), have argued that this literary movement contributed to the reunification of the country after the Civil War and to the building of national identity toward the end of the nineteenth century. According to Brodhead, "regionalism 's representation of vernacular cultures as enclaves of tradition insulated from larger cultural contact is palpably a fiction . . . its public function was not just to mourn lost cultures but to purvey a certain story of contemporary cultures and of the relations among them" (121). In chronicling the nation 's stories about its regions and mythical origins, local color fiction through its presence--and, later, its absence--contributed to the narrative of unified nationhood that late nineteenth-century America sought to construct. A variation of this genre is the "plantation tradition" fiction of Thomas Nelson Page and others. |

Literature: Local Color and Realism
American Eras | 1997 | 700+ words | Copyright
Literature: Local Color and Realism
Sources
Regional Fiction. After the Civil War local-color fiction gained widespread popularity in America. Bret Harte (1836-1902) acquainted the country with the western miner in stories such as “The Luck of Roaring Camp” (1868) and “The Outcasts of Poker Flats” (1869), while in the late 1870s the Atlanta Constitution began publishing the dialect stories of plantation life in the Deep South that Joel Chandler Harris (1848-1908) later collected as Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings (1880). George Washington Cable (1844-1925) wrote of Creoles and the bayou country near New Orleans in popular magazine stories, later collected in Old Creole Days (1879). Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896) wrote Oldtown Folks (1869), a representative portrayal of life in New England. Later New England also figured prominently in the stories of Sarah Orne Jewett (1849-1909) and Mary E. Wilkins Freeman (1852-1930). Local-color writers depicted nearly every region of America, lending realism to their stories by describing customs and manners and re-creating dialects. Because these authors usually set their stories in their regions as they remembered them from their own youth, however, they often blended realism with nostalgic sentiment. Many Americans found this mixture appealing, and local-color stories filled the pages of the leading magazines until the end of the nineteenth century.
EMILY DICKINSON: THE RECLUSE-POET
If members of the mid nineteenth-century American reading public were alive today, they would most likely be shocked to discover that by twentieth-century standards one of the greatest American poets of their time, is someone they never heard of: Emily Dickinson (1830-1886). It is also likely that most of Dickinson’s contemporaries would have hated her poems if they had read them. The few people who did see them considered them incompetent and amateurish. Yet today most scholars consider only Walt Whitman to be Dickinson’s equal and relegate nineteenth-century favorites such as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, John Greenleaf Whittier, and Sidney Lanier to the second rank.
Dickinson’s life is wrapped in a mystery that may never be solved. Some time between 1858 and 1862 she had a traumatic experience. No one knows what happened, but many believe that she was in love with a married man who did not return her affection. Suffering profound psychological distress, Dickinson withdrew from the world and spent the rest of her life at family home in Amherst, Massachusetts. She dressed only in white and devoted most of her time to writing more than fifteen hundred poems, polishing nearly nine hundred of them to what she considered finished form and tying them together in forty-three little manuscript books.
Dickinson sent some fifty of her poems to a family friend, Samuel Bowles, editor of the Springfield Republican. Bowles thought women should write light, sentimental poems, and he disliked Dickinson’s irreverence in regard to religious and social orthodoxies and her uncompromising approach to fears of madness and death. Eventually, however, he published in his newspaper five of the seven Dickinson poems, all unsigned, that appeared in print during her lifetime. Dickinson also sent more than one hundred poems to Thomas Wentworth Higginson, literary editor of The Atlantic Monthly. He told her they were unpublishable. He considered her rhyme and meter too rough and unmelodic, her word choice far too eccentric, and her punctuation exceedingly strange.
After Dickinson’s death, Higginson helped a friend of her family edited some of her poems for publication. They “cleaned up” her writing, making it more “graceful” and conventional, but even then most critics considered them peculiar and even “ungrammaticaL” Yet the reading public was fascinated. Three collections of Dickinson’s poems were published in the 1890s, and all sold well. An edition of the poems based on the original manuscripts was published in 1955. By then Dickinson was already held in high esteem by critics and readers alike. Tastes in poetry had changed dramatically. Dickinson was praised for her original images, her spare language, and her modern, skeptical point of view—all the things Higginson and others had disliked in her poems.
Dickinson’s personal life continues to fascinate. She is the subject of a popular one-woman show. Writers continue to speculate about what happened to turn her into the mysterious recluse of Amherst, always gowned in white, the poet who wrote:
The Soul selects her own Society—
Then—shuts the Door—
To her divine Majority—
Present no more—
Source: Richard B. Sewall, The Life of Emily Dickinson, 2 volumes (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1974).
Drawn From Life. Realism as a literary movement began in the mid nineteenth century as a reaction against romanticism. Whereas romantic literature presented an idealized vision of human existence, realistic works were intended to be accurate portrayals of life, depictions of the world based on careful observation. As such, realism was a literary response to the development of the modern scientific method, substituting experimentation for philosophical speculation and recognizing the flawed nature of the real world instead of aspiring to transcendental perfection. This new literary creed emerged primarily in the novel. The three major American realists began their careers in this period. They stand in interesting relationship to each other. At one extreme is the self-educated Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835-1910), who wrote under the pen name Mark Twain, a product and a chronicler of the frontier. At the other is the educated, cosmopolitan Henry James (1843-1916), whose novels usually portray Americans in Europe who confront an old, rigid, and traditional society. Clemens and James were not personally acquainted, but each was a good friend of the third realist, William Dean Howells (1837-1920), who as a native of rural Ohio and a part of the Boston literary establishment embodied both the provincial and the cosmopolitan literary bents of his two friends.
Lighting Out for New Territory. Born in the small town of Florida, Missouri, Clemens moved with his family to Hannibal, Missouri, on the Mississippi River, when he was four years old, and it was in this river town that he grew up, gathering the material for his most famous stories. After the Civil War cut short his career as a riverboat pilot, Clemens went west to Nevada, where he became a reporter on the Virginia City newspaper and wrote the humorous sketches collected in The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County (1867). He next combined personal anecdotes and humorous commentary in two travel books: The Innocents Abroad (1869), a bestseller about his 1867 tour of Europe and the Holy Land with a group of his fellow Americans, and the less successful Roughing It (1872), which drew on his experiences in Nevada. After he and his neighbor Charles Dudley Warner wrote The Gilded Age (1873), a satire on political corruption, Clemens turned to his childhood on the Mississippi, writing his classic novel The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and the autobiographical Old Times on the Mississippi (1876), later expanded as Life on the Mississippi (1883). During the 1880s and 1890s Clemens’s output included Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), his masterpiece, which expanded the literary possibilities of common, everyday American speech, and the historical novels The Prince and the Pauper (1882), A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1889), and Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc (1896), which he considered his best work.
A Timely Man. Howells was not only the author of important realistic fiction but also a literary critic, who as assistant editor (1865-1871) and then editor of The Atlantic Monthly used his considerable influence to promote realism in American fiction. While working as a reporter and editor for the Ohio State Journal in Columbus (1857-1861), Howells wrote the poems collected in Poems of Two Friends (1860). In that same year his campaign biography of Abraham Lincoln (1860) launched his career. After Lincoln took office in 1861, he named Howells American consul at Venice. While Howells wrote the sketches he revised and collected in Venetian Life (1866) after settling in Boston in 1865. After receiving positive reviews for this book, he drew again on his experiences abroad for Italian Journeys (1867) and collected his sketches of life in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in Suburban Sketches (1871). The following year he published his first novel, Their Wedding Journey. This and his next two novels, A Chance Acquaintance (1873) and A Foregone Conclusion (1874), are sometimes called steps toward the realism of Howell’s finest mature fiction. By the end of the 1870s Howells had found his true literary voice in The Lady of the Aroostook (1879), which, like his previous two, portrays an American girl in Europe—the international theme developed most successfully by his friend Henry James. Howells wrote his finest realistic fiction during the 1880s, portraying character types and treating social questions of American life in his times in Dr. Breen s Practice (1881), A Modern Instance (1882), The Rise of Silas Lapham (1885), Annie Kilburn (1889), and A Hazard of New Fortunes (1889). Taken together, Howells’s novels give a full picture of American life in the last years of the nineteenth century.
The Complex Fate of Being an American. One of the most productive and influential American novelists, Henry James was a master of fiction. Marked by a highly individual method and style, his innovative writings enlarged the possibilities of the novel. The younger brother of philosopher William James (1842-1910), James was born in New York City and educated by private teachers before entering Harvard Law School in 1862. Dropping out at the end of one academic year, he began writing short fiction and reviews. His first published story appeared in the March 1865 issue of The Atlantic Monthly. After much travel, he decided in 1875 to live in Europe, going first to Paris but settling in London in 1876. By the time he arrived in Paris he had collected some of his short fiction in A Passionate Pilgrim, and Other Tales (1875) and some travel essays in Transatlantic Sketches (1875). He had also completed his first published novel, Roderick Hudson (1876), about a young American sculptor in Rome. Having established his international theme, James wrote several novels in quick succession— The American (1877), about a wealthy Civil War veteran who goes to Paris in search of a wife, and The Europeans (1878), about two young, Europeanized Americans who visit cousins in New England. His next book, the short novel Daisy Miller (1878), became one of his biggest popular successes. The story of a young American girl who falls prey to a corrupt Italian gigolo, the book introduces a theme that appears in much of his writing: the clash between the innocence and exuberance of the New World with the corruption and wisdom of the Old. Known for his skill in portraying the complex psychology of his characters, James wrote some of his best fiction in the 1880s, including The Portrait of a Lady (1881), Washington Square (1881), The Bostonians (1886), and The Princess Casamassima (1886). His later works include The Tragic Muse (1890), What Maisie Knew (1897), The Turn of the Screw (1898), The Awkward Age (1899), The Wings of the Dove (1902), The Ambassadors (1903), and The Golden Bowl (1904).
Sources
Josephine Donovan, New England Local Color Literature: A Woman’s Tradition (New York: Ungar, 1983);
Leon Howard, Literature and the American Tradition (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1960);
Eric Sundquist, ed., American Realism: New Essays (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982). http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-2536601320.html http://uncphilithandouts.blogspot.com/2010/06/ii-middle-period-1930-1960.html
Short Stories: The form of Philippine literature which showed the most rapid development seemed to be the short story. The early didactic stories and romantic tales quickly gave way to stories about farm life and city life, the problems of society, and human hardships. Local color was well used. Jose Garcia Villa was among the first Filipino writers to receive international recognition. In 1932 Villa 's "Untitled Story" was selected by Edward J. O 'Brien in New York for inclusion in the Best Short Stories of 1932. In 1933, Scribner 's published Villa 's Footnote to Youth and Other Tales. "The Fence," also by Villa, was included in O 'Brien 's Best Short Stories of 1933.
After Villa came several significant writers. Manuel E. Arguilla wrote excellent stories about the people of Nagrebcan in How My Brother Leon Brought a Wife and Other Stories. Delfin Fresnosa vividly depicted the hardships of the poor. In his short stories Nick Joaquin included allegories of cultural and moral situations in Philippine history. He frequently recreated the past to show its relevance and value for the present. Joaquin 's book Prose and Poems (1952) was voted by a panel of critics led by Leonard Casper as the most distinguished book in fifty years of Philippine Literature in English.

In the 1950s another important writer was Nestor Vidali Mendoza Gonzalez. In Children of the Ash-Covered Loam and Other Stories (1954) and A Season of Grace (1956), Gonzalez dealt with such basic themes as loneliness, self-discovery, and hope amidst suffering.
The quality and depth of short story writing developed rapidly during the Middle Period. Among the writers who contributed to this growth are: T. D. Agcaoili, Manuel F. Arguilla, Estrella D. Alfon, Francisco Arcellana, Amante E. Bigornia, Consorcio Borje, Carlos Bulosan, Casiano T. Calalang, Fidel de Castro, Augusto C. Catanjal, Mario P. Chanco, Amador T. Daguio, Amando G. Dayrit, Morli Dharam, Delfin Fresnosa, Ligaya Victorio-Fruto, Antonio S. Gabila, Claro C. Gloria, N. V. M. Gonzalez, Sinai C. Hamada, Jose M. Hernandez, Francisco B. Icasiano, Nick Joaquin, F. Sonil Jose, Jose A. Lansang, Paz Latorena, A. E. Litiatco, Alvaro L. Martinez, A. G. Ner, Jose Villa Panganiban, Benjamin M. Pascual, Mariano C. Pascual, C. V. Pedroche, Isidro L. Retizos, Narciso G. Reyes, Vicente Rivera, Jr., Alejandro R. Roces, Arturo B. Rotor, Clemente M. Roxas, Bienvenido N. Santos, G. D. Sicam, Loreto Paras-Sulit, Silvestre L. Tagarao, Edilberto K. Tiempo, Edith L. Tiempo, Arturo M. Tolentino, J. Capiendo Tuvera, Kerima Polotan Tuvera, Nita H. Umali, Jose Garcia Villa, and Manuel Viray.
. The Middle Period - 1930-1960
Filipino writers in English began by mastering vocabulary, learning the mechanics of grammar, and imitating established Western writers. Indeed, the early period of Philippine Literature in English was a time of learning by trial and error. But by 1925 the extent and quality of writing had greatly improved. Perhaps, it is wrong to say that the early period ended in 1930. For it really faded out around the mid 20s and the middle period of Philippine Literature began somewhere in the early 30s. The transition was gradual and it overlapped.
Leopoldo Yabes has called the years 1930 to 1944 “…the most productive of distinctive work in the half century of Filipino writing in English.” There were several factors which encouraged writers at this time. Led by Francisco Arcellana and inspired by Jose Garcia Villa, a group formed “The Veronicans.” The writers chose this name because they wanted their work to bear the imprint of Christ’s face. Around the same time, some women writers formed “ The Bachelorettes.” Among their number were Teresa Arzaga, Luisa Barrera, Sally Barrera, Nelly X. Burgos, Olivia Calumpang, Corazon Juliano, Carmen Perez, and Trinidad L. Tarrosa. Both groups explored new dimensions in literary forms. Some of their work appeared in the quarterly Expression and in The Leader, which was edited by Federico Mangahas.
Another important outlet for writers in the 39s was the Graphic Weekly. With Alfredo Elfren Litiatico as literary editor, new writers such as Estrella Alfon, Nick Joaquin, and Ligaya Victorio Reyes were discovered and encouraged.
The Philippine Commonwealth Government was established on July 4, 1935. This event encouraged writers to freely search for a national identity. On October 28, 1936, the Philippine Book Guild was organized. Its early leaders included Manuel E. Arguilla, Carlos Quirino, and Arturo B. Rotor. Their purpose was to create a wider reading public for Filipino writers by printing low – cost books. Among other projects they published Rotor’s The Wound and the Scar.
In 1937 a Brief History of the Philippine Literature was published by Teofilo del Castillo. This book was of special importance since it was one of the first authoritative and objective studies of Philippine Literature.
A few years later, on February 26, 1939, the Philippine Writers League was formed. This was a highly influential organization during its brief existence. Its aims were to provide a center for the cultural activities of Filipino writers, to uplift cultural standards, to stimulate the social consciousness of the writer, to arrange for lectures and conferences, to establish friendly relations with writers for other countries, and to defend freedom of thought and expression. Its first president was Federico Mangahas, while Salvador P. Lopez, Jose A. Lansang, and I. P. Caballero served as Vice – Presidents.
At this time one of the outstanding spokesman for more social consciousness in literature was Salvador P. Lopez. He defined proletarian literature as “The interpretation of the experience of the working class in a world that has been rendered doubly dynamic by its struggles.” He stressed that the writer must champion the cause of the proletariat and interpret the experience of the working class in a world. Lopez directed the writer’s attention to the real Philippines so that he saw and described things which had never been notice or portrayed before.
In 1940 the first Commonwealth Literary Awards were granted by President Quezon. In the English division the winners were: easy - Salvador P. Lopez for Literature and Society; short story - Manuel E. Arguilla for How My Brother Leon Brought Home A Wife and Other Short Stories; poetry - R. Zulueta da Costa for Like the Molave; and the novel - Juan C. Laya for His Native Soil.
The recognition that these awards provided was an excellent stimulus for all writers. Hopes were high for further developments in Philippine literature. But these hopes were shattered on December 7, 1941, when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor and war began in the Pacific. A period of uncertainty and fear began as the Japanese entered Manila on January 3, 1942. Martial Law was immediately proclaimed. Most writers left the city and fled to the mountains. Many joined the army and fought in Bataan and Corregidor. Some died in prison camps or were executed. Among the promising writers who died during the war years were Manuel E. Arguilla, A.G. Dayrit, A.E. Litiaco, and Francisco B. Icasiano.
Victoria Abelardo has described Filipino writing during the Japanese occupation as being pessimistic and bitter. There were some efforts at escapist literature, but in general the literary output was minor and insignificant. Because of strict censorship, few literary works were printed during the war years. However, some publications were allowed such as The Tribune, Philippine Review, Pillars, Free Philippines, and Filipina.
On February 28, 1945, the long-exiled Commonwealth Government was reestablished in Malacañang. As the country recovered from the war, its writers turned first to journalistic efforts and then to creative works. The Filipino writer observed a country that was devastated by war, shattered economically, and struggling politically. Many journalists freely described what they saw and commented on necessary changes. It was a time of reevaluation and rebuilding. There was a sudden growth of periodicals such as The Manila Posts, The Evening News, The Philippine-American, The Manila Times, and The Manila Chronicle. At the same time Philippines Free Press and the Philippines Herald resumed publication. Once again various college journals appeared such as Literary Apprentice (University of the Philippines), Varsitarian (University of Santo Tomas), National (National University), and Advocate (Far Eastern University). Among te new journals were Crossroads (Far Eastern University), Sands and Coral (Silliman University), Standard (Arellano University), and Dawn (University of the East).
With the proclamation of philippine Independence on July 4, 1946, most writers felt a new sense of responsibility and freedom. The writers seemed more perceptive of their country and the world around them. At first, a number of guerilla and liberation stories appeared. Stevan Javellana 's Without Seeing the Dawn was the first postwar Filipino novel published in the United States. In 1946 the Barangay Writers Project was organized to publish books by Filipino writers in English. N.V.M. Gonzalez served as first president. Within a few years, they published Heart of the Island (1947) by Manuel A. Viray, Philippine Cross Section (1950) by Maximo Ramos and Florentino B. Valeros, and Philippine Poetry Annual (1950) by Manuel A. Viray.
At this time literary awards provided further encouragement for creative writing. Delfin Fresnosa and Manuel A. Viray began in 1947 to publish annual honor roles for the best short stories and poems. The Free Press in 1949, resumed its annual short story awards with first place going to Nick Joaquin for his "Guardia de Honor." In 1950 the Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature were created. Juan T. Gatbonton 's "Clay" won first prize in the English Short Story division.
The early 1950 's were a time of political unrest and even warfare as the government struggled with the Hukbalahap guerillas. The writers read each others works as well as the works of Ameriacan and European models. Their study of techniques and thematic treatments resulted in a literature that was varied in form and content. N.V.M. Gonzalez explored his Mindoro land, while Nick Joaquin wrote old Manila legends in modern form.
Signatures, the first Philippine poetry magazine in English, bgan publishing in 1955. It was founded by Clemente Cancio, poet and neurosurgeon. The first editors were A.G. Hufana and R.V. Diaz. In that same year, a new Philippine Writers Association was organized with N.V.M. Gonzalez as its first president.

In Baguio, in 1958, an important national writers conference was held to discuss the role of the Filipino writer in society. Also in 1958, a chapter of International Pen was inaugurated in the Philippines with Alfredo T. Morales as its first president.

During the years 1930 to 1960 Philippine literature in English rapidly improved, especially in the areas of the essay, the short story, and poetry.
Essays: During the middle period of the Philippine literature in English, the essayists tried to capture Filipino life and culture. In the 1930s Salvador P. Lopez led the school of writers who stressed social consciousness. Others, following the view of Jose Garcia Villa wrote on art and literature. In 1940, Salvador P. Lopez expressed his views Literature and Society.

Under the pseudonym "Mang Kiko," Francisco B. Icasiano wrote, in 1941, Horizons from My Nipa Hut. This book included humorous essays which revealed a deep sympathy for the common tao. During the war years the essays improved in literary style but their content was severely limited by the Japanese censors. After 1945 the essayists again turned to themes of nationalism, politics, and literary criticism. For the next ten years or so these themes were treated with an ever growing proficiency. Among the important essayists of the Middle Period might be included: F. M. Africa, Francisco Arcellana, Solomon V. Arnaldo, Jorge Bocobo, Marcelo de Gracia Concepcion, Pura Santillan-Castrence, E. Aguilar Cruz, A. T. Daguio, Amando G. Dayrit, Eugenio Ealdama, Antonio Estrada, Ariston Estrada, Josefa Gonzalez-Estrada, Antonio S. Gabila, Alfredo Q. Gonzalez, Leon Ma. Guerrero, Jr. , J. M. Hernandez, V. M. Hilario, F. B. Icasinao, Maria Kalaw-Katigbak, J. A. Lansang, Jose P. Laurel, A. E. Litiatco, T. M. Locsin, Salvador P. Lopez, Maria Luna-Lopez, A. J. Malay, I. V. Mallari, Federico Mangahas, Ignacio Manlapaz, Camilo Osias, Vicente Albano Pacis, Carlos Quirino, Godofredo Rivera, Eulogio B. Rodriguez, Carlos P. Romulo, A. B. Rotor, Leon O. Ty, Jose Garcia Villa, Manuel A. Viray, and Leopoldo Y. Yabes.

Short Stories: The form of Philippine literature which showed the most rapid development seemed to be the short story. The early didactic stories and romantic tales quickly gave way to stories about farm life and city life, the problems of society, and human hardships. Local color was well used. Jose Garcia Villa was among the first Filipino writers to receive international recognition. In 1932 Villa 's "Untitled Story" was selected by Edward J. O 'Brien in New York for inclusion in the Best Short Stories of 1932. In 1933, Scribner 's published Villa 's Footnote to Youth and Other Tales. "The Fence," also by Villa, was included in O 'Brien 's Best Short Stories of 1933.

After Villa came several significant writers. Manuel E. Arguilla wrote excellent stories about the people of Nagrebcan in How My Brother Leon Brought a Wife and Other Stories. Delfin Fresnosa vividly depicted the hardships of the poor. In his short stories Nick Joaquin included allegories of cultural and moral situations in Philippine history. He frequently recreated the past to show its relevance and value for the present. Joaquin 's book Prose and Poems (1952) was voted by a panel of critics led by Leonard Casper as the most distinguished book in fifty years of Philippine Literature in English.

In the 1950s another important writer was Nestor Vidali Mendoza Gonzalez. In Children of the Ash-Covered Loam and Other Stories (1954) and A Season of Grace (1956), Gonzalez dealt with such basic themes as loneliness, self-discovery, and hope amidst suffering.

The quality and depth of short story writing developed rapidly during the Middle Period. Among the writers who contributed to this growth are: T. D. Agcaoili, Manuel F. Arguilla, Estrella D. Alfon, Francisco Arcellana, Amante E. Bigornia, Consorcio Borje, Carlos Bulosan, Casiano T. Calalang, Fidel de Castro, Augusto C. Catanjal, Mario P. Chanco, Amador T. Daguio, Amando G. Dayrit, Morli Dharam, Delfin Fresnosa, Ligaya Victorio-Fruto, Antonio S. Gabila, Claro C. Gloria, N. V. M. Gonzalez, Sinai C. Hamada, Jose M. Hernandez, Francisco B. Icasiano, Nick Joaquin, F. Sonil Jose, Jose A. Lansang, Paz Latorena, A. E. Litiatco, Alvaro L. Martinez, A. G. Ner, Jose Villa Panganiban, Benjamin M. Pascual, Mariano C. Pascual, C. V. Pedroche, Isidro L. Retizos, Narciso G. Reyes, Vicente Rivera, Jr., Alejandro R. Roces, Arturo B. Rotor, Clemente M. Roxas, Bienvenido N. Santos, G. D. Sicam, Loreto Paras-Sulit, Silvestre L. Tagarao, Edilberto K. Tiempo, Edith L. Tiempo, Arturo M. Tolentino, J. Capiendo Tuvera, Kerima Polotan Tuvera, Nita H. Umali, Jose Garcia Villa, and Manuel Viray. http://uncphilithandouts.blogspot.com/2010/06/ii-middle-period-1930-1960.html

Bibliography: Sources Josephine Donovan, New England Local Color Literature: A Woman’s Tradition (New York: Ungar, 1983); Leon Howard, Literature and the American Tradition (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1960); Eric Sundquist, ed., American Realism: New Essays (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982).