Main currents in American thought

The first expression of the new literature. Chiefly a middle-western development—and a late phase of the literature of the local. A reaction from the “economic city,” with its centralizing economics, which dominated the problem novel. Two antagonistic interpretations: (1) The romantic small town, or the theory of a kindly, democratic world; (2) The realistic small town, or the theory of a petty, competitive world.

I. The Romantic Interpretation of the Small Town. A hold-over from an earlier period. Derives from Riley; elaborated and defended by Meredith Nicholson, The Valley of Democracy (1918). According to this theory the middle-western village is: (1) A land of economic well-being, uncursed by poverty and unspoiled by wealth; (2) A land of “folksiness”—the village a great family in its neighborliness, friendliness, sympathy; (3) Primarily middle-class, and therefore characteristically American, wholesome, and human in spite of its prosaic shortcomings; (4) The home of American democracy, dominated by the spirit of equality, where men are measured by their native qualities.⁠[24]