First published 2001
Constance Rourke examines how Americans created their national identity through popular entertainment and folk characters. She focuses on three key figures: the shrewd Yankee peddler, the rough backwoodsman, and the blackface minstrel performer. These archetypal characters, Rourke argues, helped forge a uniquely American way of seeing the world. Her study reveals how humor and popular culture shaped the national character of a restless, wandering people still figuring out who they were. Rourke weaves together unlikely pairs like frontiersman Davy Crockett with novelist Henry James, and the racist Jim Crow character with poet Emily Dickinson. She shows how jokes, tall tales, and theatrical performances became the building blocks of American sensibility. The book captures a nation constantly reinventing itself through laughter and performance, creating meaning from the collision of high and low culture.
Genres: american-fiction, humor, 20th-century, american, non-fiction, american-history
Vibes: thought-provoking
Tropes: cultural-collision, high-low-culture
Period: 19th-Century, 20th-Century
256 pages · Hardcover · Acls History E-Book Project