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American humor a study of the national character

New York Review Books classics

by Rourke Constance

Synopsis

Stepping out of the darkness, the American emerges upon the stage of history as a new character, as puzzling to himself as to others.American Humor, Constance Rourke's pioneering "study of the national character," singles out the archetypal figures of the Yankee peddler, the backwoodsman, and the blackface minstrel to illuminate the fundamental role of popular culture in fashioning a distinctive American sensibility. A memorable performance in its own right,American Humorcrackles with the jibes and jokes of generations while presenting a striking picture of a vagabond nation in perpetual self-pursuit. Davy Crockett and Henry James, Jim Crow and Emily Dickinson rub shoulders in a work that inspired such later critics as Pauline Kael and Lester Bangs and which still has much to say about the America of Bob Dylan and Thomas Pynchon, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

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Book Information

Copyright year 1958
ISBN-13 9781590170793
ISBN-10 1590170792
Class Copyright
Publisher New York Review Books
Subject LITERARY CRITICISM;SOCIAL SCIENCE
File Size 0 MB
Number of Pages 262
Shelf No. JA266