The Oxford Book of Comic Verse
The Oxford Book of Comic Verse

Author: John Gross

Publisher: Oxford Books of Prose & Verse

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780199561612

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From limericks to social satire, The Oxford Book of Comic Verse offers a remarkable collection of outstanding light poetry. John Gross has brought together the finest writers in the history of the English language - from Chaucer and Skelton to Shakespeare and Swift, Lord Byron to Robert Browning, Emily Dickinson to John Updike, as well as witty song lyrics from such artists as Irving Berlin and Cole Porter - offering delightful examples of their comic verse. Drawing on many different types of verse, including epigrams, street ballads, advertising jingles, clerihew, music-hall lyrics, and the doubledactyl of the calypso, this highly entertaining collection offers an exceptionally wide range of comic pleasures. The poems are by turns subtle, down-to-earth, macabre, ingenious, acerbic, ribald, and cheerful. Written to amuse, they call forth laughter and delight in equal measure. Compiled by one of our finest critics and anthologists, this reissue boasts a stylish new design and a fresh contemporary feel.

The Humour of America
The Humour of America

Author: Mark Twain

Publisher: Good Press

Published: 2023-11-20

Total Pages: 465

ISBN-13:

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The Humour of America serves as a vibrant anthology capturing the essence of American wit and satire through a spectrum of literary forms, from essays to short stories and playful poems. This collection, showcasing the diverse traditions of American humor, spans over two centuries of literary history, featuring seminal pieces from a broad array of authors who have deftly employed humor to critique society, reflect on national identity, or simply entertain. The anthology's curation highlights the evolution of American humor, demonstrating its role in shaping and challenging perspectives on culture, politics, and daily life. The contributing authors, including Mark Twain, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Benjamin Franklin, among others, are titans of American literature, each bringing a unique voice and vision to the anthology. Their backgrounds reflect a mosaic of American society, with works that emerged amidst pivotal movements such as the transcendentalist era, the abolitionist movement, and the early phases of modern American literature. These writers collectively underscore the complexity and richness of America's literary heritage, offering insights into the nation's evolving sense of humor and its cultural fabric. The Humour of America is an essential anthology for readers seeking to explore the depth and diversity of American humor. It offers a unique opportunity to engage with the works of renowned authors side by side, providing an educational journey through the landscape of American satire and wit. This collection not only invites readers to appreciate the literary genius of its contributors but also fosters a dialogue on the enduring power of humor to connect, critique, and celebrate the human experience.

The Fabrication of American Literature
The Fabrication of American Literature

Author: Lara Langer Cohen

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2011-11-29

Total Pages: 252

ISBN-13: 0812205197

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Literary histories typically celebrate the antebellum period as marking the triumphant emergence of American literature. But the period's readers and writers tell a different story: they derided literature as a fraud, an imposture, and a humbug, and they likened it to inflated currency, land bubbles, and quack medicine. Excavating a rich archive of magazine fiction, verse satires, comic almanacs, false slave narratives, minstrel song sheets, and early literary criticism, and revisiting such familiar figures as Edgar Allan Poe, Davy Crockett, Fanny Fern, and Herman Melville, Lara Langer Cohen uncovers the controversies over literary fraudulence that plagued these years and uses them to offer an ambitious rethinking of the antebellum print explosion. She traces the checkered fortunes of American literature from the rise of literary nationalism, which was beset by accusations of puffery, to the conversion of fraudulence from a national dilemma into a sorting mechanism that produced new racial, regional, and gender identities. Yet she also shows that even as fraudulence became a sign of marginality, some authors managed to turn their dubious reputations to account, making a virtue of their counterfeit status. This forgotten history, Cohen argues, presents a dramatically altered picture of American literature's role in antebellum culture, one in which its authority is far from assured, and its failures matter as much as its achievements.