Humor of the Southwest
Outline

definition and history-
 -fabled stories and "tall tales" that arose during the period from 1830-1860. 
 
 -included many famous characters that are still heard of today
   -Ex. Davy Crockett, Pecos Bill, Paul Bunyan, Mike Fink etc

 -everyone has more than likely heard stories of these american "heroes" at some point in theireducation
 
 -most stories were fictious but some, like the tales of Davy Crockett were based on real people   whose reputations and deeds were enhanced through "ghost writers" 
  -Crockett was probably the most famous of all these characters 
   -The stories of Crockett were the first to be recorded and appeared in Matthew St. Claire Clarke's Life and Adventures of Colonel Crockett of West Tennessee. 
   -Later Crockett wrote three pseudo-autobiographies that are now contained in TheAutobiography of David Crockett (1923).

 -There tends to be much confusion over whether or not the characters were real 
  -As the stories get retold through the generations, the confusion thickens
  -Many are "phantom" characters, that is no one is sure whether they are real or not 
  -Ex. Mike Fink
 
 -The stories were a reaction to the war of 1812
  -Americans had the desire to assert themselves
  -Wished to create the legendary and much needed "American Hero" of the expanding    country
   -As the frontiers continued to spread east, stories arose of great men and great     feats of manhood, creating legends of the time
   -Settlers fed off this propanganda 
 
 -The stories mainly ran in the humor magazine,  "Spirit of the Times" out of New York
  - In 1841 the spirit carried the tale "Big Bear of Arkansas" by Thomas Bang Thorpe
   -this piece set up the framework for what became a model for much of the     Southwest humor.

Influential Authors and Works
 
 -Most of these authors and their stories first appeared in The Spirit of the Times
 
 -These authors were widely distributed and well known throughout the Southwest and in other   regions of the country.

 -Augustus Longstreet
  -Georgia Scenes ( 1835)  is considered his best work 
   -a series of humorous sketches and aimed at preserving a record of the      backwoods life and speech that were disappearing with the expansion     of American Civilization. 
 
 -Joseph Glover Baldwin
  -The Flush times of Alabama and Mississippi(1845)
   -provided a comical treatment of the Americanization of English common law in     the boom-town courts of the frontier.
   -first to suggest the traditional beleif that Texas is the haven for "thieves, debt,     evaders, and wife deserters."
 -Johnson Jones Hooper
  -Some adventures of Captain Suggs(1845)
   -mock biography of a humorous character whose backwoods, cheating ways     were the forerunner of Faulkner's Flem Snopes.

 -George Washington Harris
  -Sut Lovington(1867)
   -was a series of humorous tales of practical jokes 
 

Humor in the American Southwest

 Humor can be divided into four chronological periods.  They are (1) 1830 to 1860, (2) 1860 to 1925, (3) 1935-1945, and (4) 1945 to present.  The period 1830 to 1860 marks the beginning of the literary movement that we know as Southwestern American Humor.   Five men are known as pioneers of this writing style. They are G. W. Harris, J.J. Hooper, A.B. Longstreet, T. B. Thorpe, and Davy Crockett.  In their writings, there are four character types developed.  These character types are the Confidence Man, the Durn’d Fool, the Ring-tailed Roarer, and the Mighty Hunter. 

 The American Southwest consisted of the following states: Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Illinois,
Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Tennessee, and Texas.  The country was rapidly growing and what had previously been wilderness was now becoming settlement.  According to Cohen and Dillingham,
“Then from all over the South men, many of whom never thought of themselves principally as writers, began to compose humorous sketches for publication” (xiv).  Furthermore, according to Cohen and Dillingham,  “The typical Southwestern humorist was a man of education and breeding who felt deeply and spoke with conviction.  Usually he wanted to talk about politics.  Often a devoted Whig, he was convinced that if the nation was to be saved from chaos and degradation, only the honor, reasonableness, and sense of responsibility of gentlemen –Whig gentlemen—could save it” (xv).  

The Conditions Which Produced Old Southwestern Humor
According to Cohen and Dillingham in “Humor of the Old Southwest”
 

1.) As the youngest region of the country, the Southwest was keenly self-conscious.  Slavery came under attack by the North between the 1830’s and 1840’s.  Since southerners were being accused of both crudity and cruelty, they felt the need to let the world know that they were proud enough of their colorful, rustic homeland to want to write about it with the express purpose of preserving in literature its scenes and customs.  But at the same time they wanted to be recognized as gentlemen.  Therefore they distanced themselves from the common folk that they observed and wrote about.
 

2.) There were political undertones in nearly all of the Southwestern authors.  Many were staunch members of the Whig party, and plainly stated their views in their sketches. While the ring-tailed roarer had his virtues he could not be trusted to run the country.

3.) The Southern frontier was a man’s world.  The Southwest humorist wrote for a very specific audience of men, and this fact alone accounts for many of the qualities of form and content.  Since they wanted to be accepted as gentlemen, they wished to be known as good-fellows who know how to tell a first-rate story.

4.) It was easy in this time and place to become a storehouse of tall tales and comic 
stories.  Through oral transmission, sketches like those of Hooper, Longstreet, and Thorpe were well known before they were written down. Not before the Southwest humorists or after them has there been a richer opportunity to take advantage of folklore.  To this they added knowledge of ancient and modern comedy and produced sketches that show the influence of both.

A List of Subjects in Southwestern Humor
As Suggested by Cohen and Dillingham in
“Humor of the Old Southwest”

(1)   The Hunt
(2)    Fights, mock fights, and animal fights
(3)    Courtings, weddings, and honeymoons
(4)    Frolics and dances
(5)    Games, horse races, and other contests
(6)    Militia drills
(7)    Elections and electioneering
(8)    The legislature and the courtroom
(9)    Sermon, camp meetings, and religious experiences
(10) The visitor in a humble home
(11) The country boy in the city
(12) The riverboat
(13) Adventures of the rogue
(14) Pranks and tricks of the practical joker
(15) Gambling
(16) Trades and Swindles
(17) Cures, sickness and bodily discomfort, medical treatments
(18) Drunks and drinking
(19) Dandies, foreigners, and city slickers
(20) Oddities and local eccentrics
 
 

Works Cited

AS@UVA.  “Anthology of Southwestern Humor.” <http://xroads.virginia,edu/~HYPER/DETOC/sw/anthology.html> (16 February 2002).

Campbell, Donna M.  “Southwestern Humor, 1830-1860.”  Literary Movements.
12 May 2001.  <http://www.gonzaga.edu/faculty/campbell/enl413/swhumor.htm>
 (16 February 2002).

Price, Angel.  “Southwestern Humor and Mark Twain.” <http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/
 railton/projects/price/southwest.htm> (15 February 2002).
 

Bibliography
 

Blair, Walter, and Hamlin Hill.  America’s Humor: From Poor Richard to Doonesbury.  
1978. New York: Oxford UP, 1980.

Blair, Walter.  Horse Sense in American Humor: From Benjamin Franklin to Ogden Nash.  New York:
  Russell & Russell, 1942.

Blair, Walter. Essays on American Humor.  Ed. Hamlin Hill. Blair Through the Ages.  Madison:
  U of Wisconsin P, 1993.

Blair, Walter, and Raven I. McDavid, Jr. eds.  The Mirth of a Nation: America’s Great 
 Dialect Humor.  Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1983.

Brown, Carolyn S.  The Tall Tale in American Folklore and Literature.  Knoxville: 
U of Tennessee P, 1987.

Cohen, Henriq, and William B. Dillingham, eds.  Humor of the Old Southwest.  2nd ed.  
 Athens: U of Georgia P, 1975.

Davy Crockett: American Comic Legend.  Ed. Richard M. Dorson.  Rockland Editions.
 New York: Spiral P, 1939.

Gohdes, Clarence, ed.  Hunting in the Old South: Original Narratives of the Hunters.  Baton Rouge:
   Louisiana State UP, 1967.

Harris, George Washington. Sut Lovingood’s Yarns.  Ed. M. Thomas Inge. The Modern Reader.  
  New Haven: College & U P, 1966.

Inge, M. Thomas, ed.  The Frontier Humorists: Critical Views.  Hamden: Shoe String Press, 1975.  

Longstreet, Augustus B., D.D., LL.D. Stories with a Moral: Humorous and Descriptive of Southern Life 
A Century Ago.  Ed.  Fritz R. Longstreet. Stories with a Moral.  Philadelphia: John C. Winston Company, 1912. 

Longstreet, Augustus B.  Georgia’s Scenes Completed.   Ed. David Rachels. A Scholarly Text.  
 Athens: U of Georgia P, 1998.

Miles, Elton.  Southwest Humorists.  Austin: Steck-Vaughn, 1969.

Rourke, Constance.  American Humor.  2nd ed.  New York: Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1953.

Stone, John Augustus, and William Bayle Bernard.  The Lion of the West.  Rev. version.  Stanford:
  Stanford UP, 1954.

Thorp, William.  American Humorists.  University of Minnesota Pamphlets on American 
 Writers.  42.  Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1964.

Thorpe, Thomas Bangs.  A New Collection of Thomas Bangs Thorpe’s Sketches of the Old Southwest.
 Ed. David C. Estes.  Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1989.