SOURCE: Kersten, Holger. “Using the Immigrant's Voice: Humor and Pathos in Nineteenth Century ‘Dutch’ Dialect Texts.” MELUS 21, no. 4 (winter 1996): 3-17.

In the following essay, Kersten details the use of the German immigrant character in nineteenth-century humor and proposes that the humorous immigrant provided a safe medium for satiric observations on American culture.

The nineteenth century, and particularly its second half, was a period in American literature in which enormous interest in linguistic variation was displayed. Writers experimented with language and used just about every form of expression that fell into their hands. In a sense, they were recorders of the huge linguistic variety that characterized America. Many of these language experiments were disseminated in small, cheaply made paperback anthologies produced by publishing houses such as Beadle and Adams. Often the subtitles of the publications indicated the scope of these little volumes, which typically included writings in “Dutch, French...