 | The Captain Attends a Camp-Meeting (Chapter Ten) |  |
Southwest Humor
One of the most popular modes of writing in the decades preceding the Civil War was the "Humor of the Old Southwest." Literary historians use that label to refer to a large collection of books, tales, sketches and descriptive essays set in the frontier South (mainly Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas and Louisiana). These texts made generous use of the vernacular voice, and regularly included con men, drunkards, raftsmen and brawlers like the people Huck and Jim meet on the river. Among the most prolific writers in this mode were A.B. Longstreet, W.T. Thompson, G.W. Harris, J.G. Baldwin, T.B. Thorpe, and J.J. Hooper, one of whose tales is included below. MT read widely in this genre, both in the 1840s and 1850s and during the years he was writing Huck Finn . The commentators agree that Chapter 20 of Huck Finn, in which the King works the Pokeville camp meeting, was based directly on Hooper's account of Simon Suggs' religious experience.
Twelve additional tales in this mode, including three by MT, and a fuller account of "Southwest Humor" as a literary movement, can be found in Angel Price's archive in the Student Projects section of this site.
| The Captain Attends a Camp-Meeting (Chapter Ten) | |