Although New England provided the most popular form of American literary humor in the nineteenth century, scholars have traditionally passed over it in favor of the more earthy "frontier" humor of the era. Cameron C. Nickels argues, however, that New England humor had a significant place in the cultural and political history of the time. Widely circulated in print and on stage, New England humor was, in fact, a national humor. Entertainment was the primary function of nineteenth-century humor, but Nickels believes that it also played a serious role in the complex struggle to give substance to...
Although New England provided the most popular form of American literary humor in the nineteenth century, scholars have traditionally passed over it i...
