Southern Frontier Humor: New Approaches

Marc Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index. Table of Contents: Preface -- Introduction / Ed Piacentino -- Henry Junius Nott and the Roots of Southern Frontier Humor / Ed Piacentino -- Hysterical Power Frontier Humor and Genres of Cultural Conquest / Jennifer A. Hughes -- Bawn in a Brier-patch and Frontier Bred Joel Chandler Harris's Debt to the Humor of the Old South / Gretchen Martin -- From Swamp Doctor to Conjure Woman Exploring Science and Race in Nineteenth-Century America / Bruce Blansett -- Sherwood Bonner and the Postbellum Legacy of Southwestern Humor / Kathryn McKee -- I wa' n't bawn in de mash to be fool' by trash! Mark Twain's A True Story and the Culmination of Southern Frontier Humor / Tracy Wuster -- Morphing Once Again From Jack to Simon Suggs to Aunt Lucille / Winifred Morgan -- Anancy's Web/Sut's Stratagems Humor, Race, and Trickery in Jamaica and the Old Southwest / John Lowe -- Postmodern Humor ante Litteram Self-Reflexivity, Incongruity, and Dialect in George Washington Harris's Yarns Spun / Mark S. Graybill -- The Real Big Kill Authenticity, Ecology, and Narrative in Southern Frontier Humor / James E. Bishop -- Contributors -- Index. Publisher Marketing: Since its inception in the early 1830s, southern frontier humor (also known as the humor of the Old Southwest) has had enduring appeal. The onset of the new millennium precipitated an impressive rejuvenation of scholarly interest. "Southern Frontier Humor: New Approaches" represents the next step in this revival, providing a series of essays with fresh perspectives and contexts. First, the book shows the importance of Henry Junius Nott, a virtually unknown and forgotten writer who mined many of the principal subjects, themes, tropes, and character types associated with southern frontier humor, followed by an essay addressing how this humor genre and its ideological impact helped to stimulate a national cultural revolution. Several essays focus on the genre's legacy to the post-Civil War era, exploring intersections between southern frontier humor and southern local color writers--Joel Chandler Harris, Charles W. Chesnutt, and Sherwood Bonner. Mark Twain's African American dialect piece "A True Story," though employing some of the conventions of southern frontier humor, is reexamined as a transitional text, showing his shift to broader concerns, particularly in race portraiture. Essays also examine the evolution of the trickster from the Jack Tales to Hooper's Simon Suggs to similar mountebanks in novels of John Kennedy Toole, Mark Childress, and Clyde Edgerton and transnational contexts, the latter exploring parallels between southern frontier humor and the Jamaican Anansi tales. Finally, the genre is situated contextually, using contemporary critical discourses, which are applied to G. W. Harris's Sut Lovingood and to various frontier hunting stories. Review Citations: Choice 12/01/2013 (EAN 9781617037689, Hardcover) Contributor Bio:  Piacentino, Ed Ed Piacentino, High Point, North Carolina, is professor emeritus of English at High Point University. He is the author or editor of several books on humor, including "The Enduring Legacy of Old Southwest Humor; Southern Frontier Humor: An Anthology" (edited with M. Thomas Inge); and "The Humor of the Old South" (edited with M. Thomas Inge).