The Humor of the Old South

by Inge, M. Thomas; Piacentino, Edward J.

• ISBN13: 9780813121949
• ISBN10: 0813121949
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2001-07-01
• Publisher: Univ Pr of Kentucky

Summary

" The humor of the Old South -- tales, almanac entries, turf reports, historical sketches, gentlemen's essays on outdoor sports, profiles of local characters -- flourished between 1830 and 1860. The genre's popularity and influence can be traced in the works of major southern writers such as William Faulkner, Erskine Caldwell, Eudora Welty, Flannery O'Connor, and Harry Crews, as well as in contemporary popular culture focusing on the rural South. This collection of essays includes some of the past twenty five years' best writing on the subject, as well as ten new works bringing fresh insights and original approaches to the subject. A number of the essays focus on well known humorists such as Augustus Baldwin Longstreet, Johnson Jones Hooper, William Tappan Thompson, and George Washington Harris, all of whom have long been recognized as key figures in Southwestern humor. Other chapters examine the origins of this early humor, in particular selected poems of William Henry Timrod and Washington Irving's "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," which anticipate the subject matter, character types, structural elements, and motifs that would become part of the Southwestern tradition. Renditions of "Sleepy Hollow" were later echoed in sketches by William Tappan Thompson, Joseph Beckman Cobb, Orlando Benedict Mayer, Francis James Robinson, and William Gilmore Simms. Several essays also explore antebellum southern humor in the context of race and gender. This literary legacy left an indelible mark on the works of later writers such as Mark Twain and William Faulkner, whose works in a comic vein reflect affinities and connections to the rich lode of materials initially popularized by the Southwestern humorists.

Table of Contents

Preface	ix
Introduction	1	(12)
James H. Justus
Origins and Influences
The Origins of the Humor of the Old South	13	(9)
J.A. Leo Lemay
``Sleepy Hollow'' Comes South: Washington Irving's Influence on Old Southwestern Humor	22	(14)
Ed Piacentino
The Function of Women in Old Southwestern Humor: Rereading Porter's Big Bear and Quarter Race Collections	36	(16)
William E. Lenz
Contesting the Boundaries of Race and Gender in Old Southwestern Humor	52	(20)
Ed Piacentino
Darkness Visible: Race and Pollution in Southwestern Humor	72	(15)
Scott Romine
Perspectives on Earlier Authors---1830-1860
The Prison House of Gender: Masculine Confinement and Escape in Southwest Humor	87	(14)
Gretchen Martin
Augustan Nostalgia and Patrician Disdain in A.B. Longstreet's Georgia Scenes	101	(12)
Kurt Albert Mayer
A Biographical Reading of A.B. Longstreet's Georgia Scenes	113	(17)
David Rachels
A Sadder Simon Suggs: Freedom and Slavery in the Humor of Johnson Hooper	130	(24)
Johanna Nicol Shields
Revising Southern Humor: William Tappan Thompson and the Major Jones Letters	154	(7)
David C. Estes
Backwoods Civility, or How the Ring-Tailed Roarer Became a Gentle Man for David Crockett, Charles F.M. Noland, and William Tappan Thompson	161	(26)
James E. Caron
Bench and Bar: Baldwin's Lawyerly Humor	187	(12)
Mary Ann Wimsat
The Good Doctor: O.B. Mayer and ``Human Natur''	199	(16)
Edwin T. Arnold
The Literary Legacy
An Old Southwesterner Abroad: Cultural Frontiers and the Landmark American Humor of J.Ross Browne's Yusef	215	(7)
Joseph Csicsila
Mark Twain: The Victorian of Southwestern Humor	222	(14)
Leland Krauth
Jason Compson and Sut Lovingood: Southwestern Humor as Stream of Consciousness	236	(11)
Stephen M. Ross
Southwestern Humor, Erskine Caldwell, and the Comedy of Frustration	247	(16)
R.J. Gray
Humor of the Old South: A Comprehensive Bibliography	263	(48)
Contributors	311	(2)
Index	313