Buch, Englisch, 352 Seiten, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm, Gewicht: 689 g
Humor and the Making of a White Man's Democracy, 1750-1850
Buch, Englisch, 352 Seiten, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm, Gewicht: 689 g
ISBN: 978-1-4214-5060-5
Verlag: Johns Hopkins University Press
A joke is never just a joke—not even in the eighteenth century. In American Laughter, American Fury, Eran A. Zelnik offers a cultural history of early America that shows how humor among white men served to define and construct not only whiteness and masculinity but also American political culture and democracy more generally.
Zelnik traces the emerging bonds of affinity that white male settlers in North America cultivated through their shared, transformative experience of mirth. This humor—a category that includes not only jokes but also play, riot, revelry, and mimicry—shaped the democratic and anti-elitist sensibilities of Americans. It also defined the borders of who could participate in politics, notably excluding those who were not white men. While this anti-authoritarian humor transformed the early United States into a country that abhorred elitism and class hierarchies, ultimately the story is one of democratization gone awry: this same humor allowed white men to draw the borders of the new nation exclusively around themselves.
Zelnik analyzes several distinct forms of humor to make his case: tall tales, "Indian play," Black dialect, riot and revelry, revolutionary protests, and blackface minstrelsy. This provocative study seeks to understand the vexing, contradictory interplay among humor, democracy, and violence at the heart of American history and culture that continues today.
Autoren/Hrsg.
Fachgebiete
Weitere Infos & Material
Introduction
Part I: Yankees and Gentlemen
1. The Joyous Multitude: Humor and the Premodern Crowd in the Revolutionary Era
2. The Witty Few: Augustan Humor and the Politics of Exclusion
Part II: From Backcountry to Frontier
3. Laughter in the Wilderness: Transgression and Mirth in Rural America
4. The Laughter and the Fury: Terror and Masquerade on the American Frontier
5. Alligator-Horses: The Frontier Jester and the Origins of Manifest Destiny
Part III: A Tale of Two Clowns
6. A Black Clown for a White Nation: The Origins and Context of Blackface Minstrelsy
7. American Foils: Black and White Jesters in Antebellum Popular Culture
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index
