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Regionalism, it seems safe to say, is making something of a comeback. As David Jordan observes in New World Regionalism, 'from the early decades of the twentieth century to the present day, regionalism has been relegated to the periphery of North American literature and criticism,' but in light of a series of cultural and political paradigms -- poststructuralism, postmodernism, post - colonialism, and post - nationalism -- critics are beginning to develop more sophisticated and engaging approaches to regionalism. Jordan's New World Regionalism, part of the University of Toronto Press's Theory/Culture series, makes an important contribution to this reappraisal, as Jordan does a great deal to reclaim regionalism from its traditional obscurity and to demonstrate regionalism's renewed relevance.
New World Regionalism, as the title suggests, is concerned with literary regionalism in the New World, focusing principally on Brazilian, Mexican, American, and Canadian writing. Jordan's project in the book is not to give a comprehensive overview of the subject, but rather to provide 'a conceptual framework capable of accounting for a phenomen - on that spans two continents and includes three linguistic and two cultural heritages.' The result is a slimmer book than the topic warrants, but Jordan is fairly adept at re - theorizing regionalism and demonstrating its potential as a context within which to approach literary texts.
Jordan's book takes roughly the form of a comparative literary history, as he charts the changing...