The Tall Story
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The Tall Tale in American Folklore and Literature
Author: Carolyn Schmidt Brown
language: en
Publisher: Univ. of Tennessee Press
Release Date: 1987
To Carolyn Brown's mind, the tall tale is not necessarily an account of the adventures of a larger-than-life hero, nor is it just a humorous first-person narrative exaggerated to outlandish proportions. The tall tale is also a social statement that identifies and binds a folk group by flaunting the peculiar knowledge and experiences of group members, and it is a tool for coping with a stressful or even chaotic world, for conquering life's problems by laughing at them. Drawing on previous research and her own original fieldwork, the author develops in detail this definition of the tall tale as a genre of folklore, and she then explores how tall tale methods and meaning have been translated into literary humor. She probes the ways that writers have used this genre to create a complex theoretical relationship among text, author, narrator, and reader. Finally, Brown alludes to the echoes of all tale attitudes and style still found in modern written humor. -- From publisher's description.
Mark Twain and the Art of the Tall Tale
Author: Henry B. Wonham
language: en
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Release Date: 1993-03-18
Mark Twain and the Art of the Tall Tale is a study of a peculiar American comic strategy and its role in Mark Twain's fiction. Focusing on the writer's experiments with narrative structure, Wonham describes how Twain manipulated conventional approaches to reading and writing by engaging his audience in a series of rhetorical games--the rules of which he adapted from the conventions of tall tale in American oral and written traditions. Wonham goes on to show how Twain's appropriation of the genre developed through the course of his career, from The Innocents Abroad to Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn, and Pudd'nhead Wilson. This eminently readable study will interest Twain enthusiasts and students of nineteenth-century American literature, as well as anyone interested in American humor and oral narrative traditions.