Both the Genteel Tradition and Calvinistic Puritanism exhibited a sense of possessing inside information about the workings of the universe and the intentions of the Almighty. In Humor and Revelation in American Literature, Pascal Covici, Jr., traces this perspective from its early presence to the humorous tradition in America that has been related to the Old Southwest, showing how American Puritan thought was instrumental in the formative stages of American humor. Covici argues that much of American literature works as humor does, surprising readers into sudden enlightenment. The humor from which Mark Twain derived his early models had the same sort of arrogance as American Puritan thought, especially in regard to social and political truths. Twain transcended the roots of that humor, which run from works of nineteenth-century Americans back to British forms of the eighteenth century. In doing so, he helped shape American literature. In addition to reexamining Twain's art, Humor and Revelation in American Literature considers some of the writers long regarded as among the usual suspects in any consideration of cultural hegemony, including Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, and Melville. Covici explores not so much the hypocrisy as the ambivalence repeatedly displayed in American literature. He demonstrates that even though our writers have always had a strong desire to avoid the influences of the past, their independence from its cultural, theological, and psychological effects has been much slower in coming than previously thought. Original and well-written, Humor and Revelation in American Literature will be welcomed by all scholars and critics of American literature, especially those interested in Puritanism, major nineteenth-century writers, Southwestern humor, and Mark Twain.

The Old Southwest flourished between 1830 and 1860, but its brand of humor lives on in the writings of Mark Twain, the novels of William Faulkner, the television series The Beverly Hillbillies, the material of comedian Jeff Foxworthy, and even cyberspace, where nonsoutherners can come up to speed on subjects like hickphonics. The first book on its subject, The Enduring Legacy of Old Southwest Humor engages topics ranging from folklore to feminism to the Internet as it pays tribute to a distinctly American comic style that has continued to reinvent itself. The book begins by examining frontier southern humor as manifested in works of Faulkner, Erskine Caldwell, Flannery O’Connor, Eudora Welty, Woody Guthrie, Harry Crews, William Price Fox, Fred Chappell, Barry Hannah, Cormac McCarthy, and African American writers Zora Neale Hurston, Ralph Ellison, Alice Walker, Ishmael Reed, and Yusef Komunyakaa. It then explores southwestern humor’s legacy in popular culture—including comic strips, comedians, and sitcoms—and on the Internet. Many of the trademark themes of modern and contemporary southern wit appeared in stories that circulated in the antebellum Southwest. Often taking the form of tall tales, those stories have served and continue to serve as rich, reusable material for southern writers and entertainers in the twentieth century and beyond. The Enduring Legacy of Old Southwest Humor is an innovative collaboration that delves into jokes about hunting, drinking, boasting, and gambling as it studies, among other things, the styles of comedians Andy Griffith, Dave Gardner, and Justin Wilson. It gives splendid demonstration that through the centuries southern humor has continued to be a powerful tool for disarming hypocrites and opening up sensitive issues for discussion.

You're no idiot, of course. You know that Samuel Clemens had a better-known pen name, Moby Dick is a famous whale, and the Raven only said,"Nevermore." But when it comes to understanding the great works of Mark Twain, Herman Melville, and Edgar Allan Poe, you'd rather rent the videos than head to your local library. Don't tear up your library card yet! The Complete Idiot's Guide® to American Literature teaches you all about the rich tradition of American prose and poetry, so you can fully appreciate its magnificent diversity.

Positions Revelation within an ancient Jewish context and demonstrates how the author used humor to resist Roman power.

Explores how humor can be explained across the various sub-disciplines of linguistics, in order to aid communication.

Focusing on the experience of freedom embodied in three Twain texts, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, and No. 44, the Mysterious Stranger, this book encapsulates both Twain's early and late theoretical speculations on the nature of the divided self. From the thoughts and actions of the protagonists in these works, we can trace and follow Twain's fictive map of mind, one that eventually leads to a new vision of personal freedom.