Old Southwestern Humor

Abstract

Old Southwestern humor is a genre of comic short fiction about rural life in the lower South that proliferated from the mid-1830s to the eve of the Civil War. Authored by amateurs and published in periodicals, the sketches describe field and turf sports, pranks and cons, and eccentric characters and incidents, typically among non-elite whites. A successful genre of popular culture, old Southwestern humor also reflects the zeitgeist that accompanied the lower South’s transformation from Indigenous lands into agricultural communities by intrepid yet opportunistic white immigrants. Its motifs also helped define the nation’s image of the region, if not the white South’s own emergent sense of cultural identity. Consequently, elements of old Southwestern humor survive in subsequent southern literature and popular culture, lingering signifiers of regional character.