SOURCE: Turner, Arlin. “Seeds of Literary Revolt in the Humor of the Old Southwest.” Louisiana Historical Quarterly 39, no. 2 (April 1956): 143-51.

In the following essay, Turner considers the initially poor reputation of Southwestern humor stories and argues that writers of the genre were in revolt against the tradition of “polite letters.”

While editor of The Southern Quarterly Review (1849-1856), William Gilmore Simms reviewed briefly several books of humorous tales and sketches from the Old Southwest. He called one of these books “a collection of broad-grin, Southern and Western exaggeration—comicalities of the woods and wayside; such as will compel laughter if not reflection.” And he added, “Just the sort of volume to snatch up in a railway and steamboat, and put out of sight in all other places.”¹ Earlier he had called a similar book “one of a class to which we do not seriously incline,” and of the...