Friday, January 29, 2010
Antebellum Southern Laughter
One of the most popular genres of southern writing of the antebellum period was frontier humor. Composed exclusively by men, often professional men but not usually professional writers and frequently published anonymously or pseudonymously, in newspapers, almanacs, or periodicals, the humorous sketches and tales of the Old South, in many instances, defied and transgressive propriety of subject matter and conventional notions regarding women and other minorities, most notably African Americans. In this blog, address the transgressive or unconventional nature of antebellum southern humor, focusing briefly on several of the assigned works. Limit your response to 200-250 words and post your response NO LATER THAN THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 4, AT 9 AM.
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In the American south, storytelling was one of the best forms of entertainment. In Johnson Jones Hooper’s story, Some Adventures of Capitan Simon Suggs, we find that the protagonist is viewing a gathering of people in worship. They have come together to praise the Lord for all the sins they have committed. These people were very passionate about their worship. They would yell and scream, fall to their knees, and would look hysterical. Capitan Suggs watched from afar, until a preacher saw him and called him down. Capitan Suggs came down and went along with the worship, telling one of his own personal stories. The townspeople loved it so much that they made him one of their own and quickly made him an assistant to gathering the money. Capitan Suggs convinced the townspeople to give everything they could and tried to get them to out-give each other. He convinced the “official financial keeper” he was going to pray over the money, thanking the Lord for all they gave down by the swamp. He moved down to the swamp, where his horse stayed, and rode off into the night. Now, that story has everything people of this time would be able to relate to. Religion was huge in the south, as it may have been the only thing that kept people going. Capitan Suggs was a cunning man, which made for a good main character, and had an entertaining imagination. With such a strong religious background in the south, theft during a ceremony was unheard of, thus creating an imaginative, yet comical piece of storytelling.
ReplyDeleteScott Wilson
In Solomon Franklin Smith's "The Consolate Widow" the reader is able to see a kind of humor that was in the old south. A man telling the story rides up on a group of people who had just watched a quarter race. The man notice that one of the riders and his horse had been killed during the race. As he got closer, he noticed that no one seemed upset or acting as a normal person would if someone just died. The man talks to a very calm women that standing near the body and talked to her. After talking for a few minutes, he found out that this woman was the dead riders wife. The man was astonished to find this out because the woman was not at all upset. The humor is that while most people would be upset and shocked, the widow was neither, in fact she seemed somewhat happy that her husband was now dead. The fact that a woman would act such a way when her husband died back then is a lot different then how most women would act today, thus making the story humorous. Smtih does a good job of writing the story in a calm tone and leads the reader to an unexpected ending making the story seem that much more funny.
ReplyDeleteIn "A consolate Widow" and "The Struggle For Life," certain incidents are taken very lightly and shows how the American South wasn't too concerned with joking around with others. The one man is so concerned about the man who died from too much whisky in "A Consolate Widow," but the woman doesn't seem to care much. That woman was his wife but she leads him to think she's not because she isn't upset. A normal wife would be heartbroken. Southern humor isn't taken too seriously. In "A Struggle For Life," she believes that this dwarf will lead her to her destination for a little bit of liquor but ends up getting lost by her drunken escort. He laughs at her when she confronts him about being lost. Again, it shows how this Southern humor can consist of playing tricks on others to be entertained. Both these stories show how Southern humor isn't very serious and is used more in a joking matter.
ReplyDeleteMuch of the humor from the American South seems to be written in the vulgar vernacular of the working folk of the time. In George W Harris' Parson Bullen's lizards we can see much of the slang dialect throughout the work. While the authors themselves didn't usually speak in such a manor it was a way to represent the voice of the simple people of the time. Also in this work of humor we can see the humor as a form of unveiling hipocracy through trickery and lizards are released into Lovinggood's robe. This causes him to tear it off and expose the true nature of his indulgences and a hilarious theatrical scean of chaos.
ReplyDeleteMost of the short tales of humor for the south is rather harsh. For example, in one of the last tales written about women in particular, "Riproarious Shemales" was picking on women, talking about the female race like animals. "Half horse-half alligator" was used to describe these kind of women in the tales and rather than being humorous it sounded almost cruel. However, during this particular time period it was a way for people to try and tell a different tale besides all of the seriousness of other types of stories written (like those we have been assigned previously). Humor was also shown in that of the tale of Sally Dilliard by showing the run-around story of the witness that ended up not having any true pertinence in the beginning. Also in "The Consolate Widow", the wife took a light-hearted/funny look at the death of her husband and made it seem like no big deal instead of what one would normally consider if a loved one had passed. These stories let authors of the time show humor and opened a different area of writing for the south, even though at times it was more vulgar than funny.
ReplyDeletePaige Coleman
The humor I find in these stories is that of simple humor, written by seemingly simple authors. The stories are not hard to follow and do not have too complicated plots. I feel the authors base their humor against woman and African Americans mostly because of their lack of representation in writing. They aim their remarks at these groups of people because its like they can't defend themselves. There were black and woman writers but I feel they were not as popular as the humorists who wrote against them. In, "The Captain Attends a Camp-Meeting," Captain Suggs comes across a group of people worshipping, including blacks and women. The 'priests' are shown groping the woman so as to save them from their sins. Suggs remarks, "wonder what's the reason these here preachers never hugs up the old, ugly women?" I feel he is implying that the men found the religious ceremony as an excuse ot feel up the woman, therefore using the woman for physical gains and not accepting them as a part of the religious event. In, "Cousin Sally Dillard," a lawyer brings in a drunk witness to testify about a case. All the drunk does is recount a tale of a woman who tells his wife to leave the house, over and over again. The court cannot take him seriously and the story is written so the reader would not take him seriously, nor the story of the woman involved seriously either.
ReplyDeleteIn Henry C. Lewis' "A Struggle for Life," we find the Southern tall-tale depiction, which many Southern writers utilized. The idea of a deceptive, chimp like Negro leading a man out in the bayou for his demise was surely an attractive and humorous story for the time. Even though Lewis has been compared to Poe, his story contains many funny elements and outlandish events so neatly woven together.
ReplyDeleteSol Smith writes a comical story in "The Consolate Widow." We have basically two stereotypical images of the Southern woman. One is the sweet and charming Southern Belle who is innocent, quite attractive and sheltered. The other cliche is the rough Southern woman in the backwoods who smokes, dips snuff and cleans fish etc..Smith does not exhaust the latter stereotype to an extreme; however, we can see some depiction of it in how she was smoking on the ground and using a bit of dialect.
As it was stated in the Norton Anthology book, “oral storytelling, rambunctious comedy, and unabashed realism …became known as southwestern humor in the early nineteenth century.” We are able to see this in the readings such as, Sol Smith’s “The Consolate Widow” and in Johnson Hooper’s “Some Adventures of Captain Simon Suggs.” In “The Consolate Widow,” even though it is not a rambunctious comedy it still has humor in it because the whole incident is comical with the scene of the people and the wife carelessly standing around not being concerned with the death of the man that died from drinking whiskey. That scene is humorous because in a normal situation, most people would be concerned about the dead man and the wife would normally be concerned that her husband passed away. Therefore, this story fits in perfectly with this genre because people knew that this sort of situation would not happen, so it gave them something to laugh at. Then, in “Some Adventures of Captain Simon Suggs,” we see that it actually is a rambunctious comedy due to the action and energetic scenes with the worshipping part and because it truly was unusual for someone to steal money or steal anything for that matter during a ceremony, especially a religious ceremony. Therefore again, this story as well was a comic relief for readers during this time because people knew that something of this sort would not normally happen so that way they could find humor in it.
ReplyDeleteElisha Robbins
In Hamilton Jones' "Cousin sally Dillard" and Solomon Smith's "The Consolate Widow," the humor comes from two characters who do not seem to comprehend the situation. In the case of "Cousin Sally Dillard" Mr. Harris is supposed to be telling the story of a fight he witnessed to the court. The story he actually tells to the court has nothing to do with the fight. His story is about his wife and Cousin Sally Dillard instead of the fight he supposedly witnessed. He continues to tell the same story even after threatened with being held in contempt. In "The Consolate Widow" a woman's husband has just died from a gruesome death and she stands by as if nothing is the matter. Her husband's neck has been cut and the horse he was riding is run into a building. Nonetheless she blends in with the crowd and could care less that her husband is dead. In these two stories the humor comes from characters who do not seem to understand the situation that they are in. This is an unconventional way of humor today because we view it as an awkward situation instead of humor.
ReplyDeleteAustin Wilson
Based off the reading for class today the only reason I can find as to why Southern Humor would be consider humorous by anyone, mainly people from that era, is that events like the ones that take places in these stories and tall tales are things that would never take place in real life in that time period.
ReplyDeleteI don’t care what time period you are in no lawyer is ever going to call a drunk person to the stand or for that matter someone that has no clue of the events they are being asked about like Lawyer Chops did in “Cousin Sally Dilliard”. It’s easy to see that Mr. Harris hasn’t a clue but he just sticks to his story like the drunk that he is.
Three other stories of events that would never really happen are the shemales stories. In “Katy Goodgrit”, Katy goes out into the woods, see some wolves and then kill fifty of them with a club. The only way anyone could ever kill fifty wolves would be a machine gun. There is also the perfect infant prodigy of “Grinning Lightning at a Bear”. This is a story of a six year old girl who kills a bear in the woods, then has him for the family dinner that night because of her lightning powers.
None of these wise tales are true and never will be true , which is why people can view them as humor.
Mike Goins
What makes these stories “humorous” is the preposterous plot lines that they involve. By today’s standards, these stories are in no way shape our form funny. Today, we consider things like cartoons funny, someone making fools out of themselves in a novel is funny. These stories are just ridiculous, and rather unexpected. I’ve had this view of the Old South of being uptight and lacking any sense of humor that the rest of the nation was aware of. Evidence is the Civil War. They took every little action against them seriously, there was nothing lightly at all, no jokes anywhere. But to see them take such things as trials lightly, putting a drunken man on the stand for instance, is just ludicrous. To me their humor falls more under disrespect for standards of normal society than actually being funny. Out of all the readings we’ve done thus far in class, these have been my least favorite. It seems harsh, but overall I just find them way to out of the ordinary for my liking.
ReplyDeleteDanny Vivenzio
Many Southern writers used humor to tell stories during the nineteenth century. The stories were fairly simple and easy to understand what was happening. The writers often used dialect to entertain the readers with colorful characters. These stories told were both tall tales and based on events that happened in the small towns of the Southeastern United States. The Southern readers may have been able to relate to some of the stories, while Northern readers would become fascinated with the Southern frontier lifestyle. In “The Consolate Widow,” we see the humorous tale of a wife losing her husband when he is killed. No one in the town seems concerned that the man is lying dead in the middle of the road and they continue what they were doing as if nothing devastating happened. The mans’ wife does not seem at all upset that her husband was killed and even goes on to say “he warnt of much account, no howl.” From looking at Ham Jones’ “Cousin Sally Dilliard” we see the story of a drunk witnessing in the courtroom about a right that recently happened. However, the man is so drunk he just keeps telling the story of a woman coming to his house and asking his wife and the foreman of the crop to go with her. These antebellum southern humor writings show us that people in the South were not always serious. They were carefree in the stories because they were mainly used for entertainment.
ReplyDeleteHeather Mitchell
Going through these readings of southern humor form the antebellum time period, I can see lots of reasons these works were based on whimsical or unconventional ideas. The idea of a drunk being called to the witness stand in court like in “Cousin Sally Dillard” or the comical and definitely atypical response of the recent widow to her late husband’s death in “A Consulate Widow” are representative of the use of atypical behavior in the creation of comedy in that time period.
ReplyDeleteMy personal favorite among these stories is the “selected tales featuring shemales from the Crockett Almanacs.” The fantastical stories about women in these writings are so exaggerated in their descriptions of their heroine’s tales that they take on a persona of their own & become more than just women. They become something more but following traits typically attributed to men in that time. I love the descriptions of Davy Crockett’s daughters, where he tells of his six year old’s fight with a barr (bear). I love how he describes her as full of “Crockett lightnin” and her capability to merely smile at the most savage beast in the forest and thus kill it. Such a fantastic idea is so much more than the realm of possibility that it creates a hilarious comedy that is still funny today.
Andrew Woods
In the Old South, humor can be seen as trickery. In the story written by Harris, the reader sees the humor in the trickery of Sut when he puts the snakes and lizards in the pants of the preacher. The way that Harris writes, gives the reader a glimpse of what life in the South is like. Harris makes it seem like the reader is standing right beside Sut involved in the conversation with is use of thick Southern dialect and imagery of religion. Lewis also uses the element of trickery in his story as well. The trickery is seen when the slave gets the doctor lost in the swamp. When the doctor questions the slave about where they are headed, the slave just chuckles. I must say that I did not find the rest of this story very humorous. The humor found in the stories about “Riproarious Shemales: Legendary Women of the Crockett Almanacs” is that these stories are very tall tales that would never happen. Although they were tall tales they portrayed woman like big strong males doing what southern males would do. The stories are humorous in that they are tall tales, but they are also humorous in the fact that they are portraying women performing male tasks. Women fighting off wolves and killing bears was not seen as very “lady-like” in the Old South.
ReplyDeleteKristen Whitaker
The one thing that really struck me about the Southwestern humor stories is that most of them did not flow like a traditionally story usually does. Stories usually have an introduction and then build up to a climax and then after the climax wind down tying up any lose ends. These stories seemed more like long jokes to me. In the Consolate Widow the location of the story is set and many details are given about what just happened. And then instead of something exciting happening the woman speaking just says she’s the dead man’s wife. It was much more of a punch line then anything thing else. This story just feels like a joke that somebody could tell to a group of their friends.
ReplyDeleteThe same thing can be said for Cousin Sally Dillard. The whole time I was reading this I was curious to hear what really happened in this terrible fight. The reader and the lawyer are both frustrated by the witnesses lengthy and round about introduction into the story of what happened. And then when he finally gets to finish speaking it turns out that was all he had to say and he never knew anything about the fight. This seems like the ending of a bad joke. A lot of suspense is built up for absolutely nothing.
-Alex Fisher
In Harris's "Parson John Bullen’s Lizards", the typical southern humor is seen. Harris uses extreme vernacular when John Bullen wrote his testament to the town, and when any natives speak. The entertainment comes from the lack intelligence seen in the language used. Numerous words are spelled improperly to give off the idea that the person speaking was clearly uneducated. For example in stead of your, the character would say "ur", and the same goes for to, spelled as "tu". When reading it, I almost felt exhausted trying to decipher exactly what the character was trying to say, and again I think this is part of the humor. It is, to me, a transgression in writing because it uses the primitive language. Eloquent writing and sentences are lost because of the use of vernacular. Similar transgressions can be seen in many of the southern humor writings. Although advancements were eventually made in writing, this may have been a plateau point in the history of story telling.
ReplyDelete-Megan Perry
Many of the writer of the south used humor at the expense of minorities to tell a story. For example in Johnson Hooper's "The Captain Attends a Camp-meeting" he explains his experience in watching African Americans worship.He specifically described one of the women is saw as a "Greasy negro woman." He also described their worshiping as "convulsively." These people were passionate about their worship but the writer has found a way to make their worship humorous to himself and maybe even some of his audience.
ReplyDelete