The Humor of the Old South
The Humor of the Old South

Author: M. Thomas Inge

Publisher: University Press of Kentucky

Published: 2021-10-21

Total Pages: 484

ISBN-13: 0813185459

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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.

The American People
The American People

Author: B.A. Botkin

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-02-13

Total Pages: 566

ISBN-13: 1000679470

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This stimulating anthology, prepared by the great folklorist, B.A. Botkin, is comprised of the traditional songs, stories, customs, and beliefs which have been handed down, by word of mouth, for so long that they seem to have a life of their own. For Botkin, they are at the core of peoplehood. When one thinks of American folklore one thinks not only of the folklore of American life, the traditions that have sprung up on American soil, but also of the literature of folklore, the migratory traditions that have found a home in the New World.

After the Absolute
After the Absolute

Author: David Gold

Publisher: iUniverse

Published: 2002-09

Total Pages: 388

ISBN-13: 0595239943

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Richard Rose was an unlikely Zen master: A rugged, plainspoken, ornery West Virginian, he scraped out a living raising goats, planting crops and painting houses. But Richard Rose had a secret: Having once vowed to "find the Truth or die trying," Rose experienced a cataclysmic spiritual awakening at age 30 that thrust him into "Everything-ness and Nothing-ness," or what he called "the Absolute." The experience left him with only one earthly desire: to do anything, for anyone, on a similar quest for Truth. David Gold was an unlikely student: An arrogant, ambitious and egotistical law-student, David Gold only agreed to meet the "enlightened hillbilly" in the hopes of showing him up. But when Rose turned the tables by seeing right through Gold and painting a devastatingly accurate picture of the fears and obsessions that ruled his life, a humbled Gold found himself hungry to know more. Thus began a remarkable 15-year adventure part spiritual odyssey, part legal thriller in which death threats, corrupt politicians, and life-threatening cancer run parallel to glimpses of the divine and extraordinary manifestations of timeless wisdom.

Southern Writers
Southern Writers

Author: Joseph M. Flora

Publisher: LSU Press

Published: 2006-06-21

Total Pages: 498

ISBN-13: 0807131237

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This new edition of Southern Writers assumes its distinguished predecessor's place as the essential reference on literary artists of the American South. Broadly expanded and thoroughly revised, it boasts 604 entries-nearly double the earlier edition's-written by 264 scholars. For every figure major and minor, from the venerable and canonical to the fresh and innovative, a biographical sketch and chronological list of published works provide comprehensive, concise, up-to-date information. Here in one convenient source are the South's novelists and short story writers, poets and dramatists, memoirists and essayists, journalists, scholars, and biographers from the colonial period to the twenty-first century. What constitutes a "southern writer" is always a matter for debate. Editors Joseph M. Flora and Amber Vogel have used a generous definition that turns on having a significant connection to the region, in either a personal or literary sense. New to this volume are younger writers who have emerged in the quarter century since the dictionary's original publication, as well as older talents previously unknown or unacknowledged. For almost every writer found in the previous edition, a new biography has been commissioned. Drawn from the very best minds on southern literature and covering the full spectrum of its practitioners, Southern Writers is an indispensable reference book for anyone intrigued by the subject.