SOURCE: Inge, M. Thomas. “The Satiric Artistry of George Washington Harris.” In Faulkner, Sut, and Other Southerners, pp. 77-87. West Cornwall, Conn.: Locust Hill Press, 1992.

In the following essay, Inge regards George Washington Harris as a satirist of the highest order and praises his creation of the Sut Lovingood character.

Among the nineteenth-century American humorists of the old Southwest, a Tennessean named George Washington Harris, above all others, has elicited the admiration of modern readers for his salient comic artistry and ingenious control of language. Highly effective characterization, a sharp eye for descriptive detail in action and surroundings, and a brilliantly complex command of the Southern vernacular and its potential for meaningful imagery—these are the hallmarks of his artistic superiority to his contemporaries. And he contributed to American literature the lively figure of Sut Lovingood, who stands beside Shakespeare's Falstaff and Chaucer's Wife of Bath in his...