Research Catalog

Title

Sut Lovingood's nat'ral born yarnspinner : essays on George Washington Harris / edited by James E. Caron and M. Thomas Inge.

Publication

Tuscaloosa, AL : University of Alabama Press, 1996.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Additional Authors

• Caron, James Edward, 1952-
• Inge, M. Thomas.

Description

xii, 330 pages : illustrations; 24 cm

Summary

• Sut Lovingood's Nat'ral Born Yarnspinner: Essays on George Washington Harris is the first collection of critical commentary and new scholarship to be published on the east Tennessee, antebellum comic writer who was famous for creating the character of Sut Lovingood. The collection both recognizes and reconfirms the status of Harris as one of the most important antebellum comic writers by bringing together new essays with essential biographical information and representative commentary from the past.
• Anyone wishing to understand Harris and his place within the tradition of American humor will want to read this book.
• Born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, Harris (1814-1869) spent most of his life in Knoxville, Tennessee. He served as captain on a Tennessee River steamboat, tried his hand at large-scale farming, and operated a metal working and jewelry shop. While on the farm he began to experiment with a variety of literary forms, and by 1854 he introduced Sut Lovingood, a youthful and "nat'ral born durn'd fool" from Tennessee.
• Throughout the 1850s Harris created a variety of adventures for Sut that were extremely popular and often reprinted. Many of these Sut stories were included in his only book collection (Sut Lovingood. Yarns Spun by a "Nat'ral Born Durn'd Fool"), which was first published in 1867 and remained continuously in print until 1925.
• In his masterful use of dialect, striking control of metaphor and imagery, and the creation of explosive action, Harris was to have no match until Mark Twain and William Faulkner, both of whom read Harris with great appreciation.

Subjects

• Lovingood, Sut (Fictitious character)
• Humorous stories, American > Tennessee > History and criticism
• Lovingood, Sut (Fictitious character) > Bibliography
• Dialect literature, American > Tennessee > History and criticism
• Tennessee > In literature
• Harris, George Washington, 1814-1869 > Criticism and interpretation

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. [215]-322) and index.

Contents

• Introduction / James E. Caron -- The Life of George Washington Harris (1947) / Donald Day -- Sudden and Mysterious Death (1869) / Anonymous -- The Real Sut (1955) / Ben Harris McClary -- New Publications (1867) / Anonymous -- New Books (1867) / Anonymous -- Sut Lovingood (1867) / Mark Twain -- George Washington Harris (1907) / J. Thompson Brown, Jr. -- Sut Lovingood's Yarns (1909) / George E. Mellen -- George Washington Harris (1937) / Walter Blair -- Man in the Open Air (1941) / F. O. Matthiessen -- Poisoned! (1955) / Edmund Wilson -- A Note on Edmund Wilson and George Washington Harris (1962) / Brom Weber -- The Fool as Point of View (1965) / Milton Rickels -- Sut and His Illustrators (1967) / M. Thomas Inge -- Timon in Tennessee: The Moral Fervor of George Washington Harris (1970) / Elmo Howell -- The Blind Bull, Human Nature: Sut Lovingood and the Damned Human Race (1978) / Noel Polk --
• George Washington Harris and Supernaturalism (1982) / Benjamin Franklin Fisher IV -- Sensuality, Revenge, and Freedom: Women in Sut Lovingood. Yarns Spun by a "Nat'ral Born Durn'd Fool" (1983) / William E. Lenz -- Sut Lovingood: A Nat'ral Born Durn'd Yarnspinner (1987) / Carolyn S. Brown -- A Tribute to Harris's Sheriff Doltin Sequence / Hershei Parker -- Seeing Sutly: Visual and Verbal Play in the Work of George Washington Harris / Sheiley Armitage -- Propriety, Society, and Sut Lovingood: Vernacular Gentility in Action / Pascal Covici, Jr. -- Sut and His Sisters: Vernacular Humor and Genteel Culture / Nancy A. Walker -- Playin' Hell: Sut Lovingood as Durn'd Fool Preacher / James F. Caron -- Uneasy Laughter: Sut Lovingood - Between Rip Van Winkle and Andrew Dice Clay / Sanford Pinsker -- A Bibliography of George Washington Harris / M. Thomas Inge -- Contributors to "New Perspectives".̃

ISBN

0817308210 (alk. paper)

LCCN

95046293

OCLC

• 33403883
• ocm33403883

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries