Mother Wit from the Laughing Barrel by Alan Dundes

Mother Wit from the Laughing Barrel by Alan Dundes

Exploring the scope, diversity, and vitality of black culture, here is a fascinating collection of more than sixty articles from some of the most perceptive and authoritative commentators upon the black experience--Zora Neale Hurston, J. Mason Brewer, Sterling A. Brown, Eldridge Cleaver, Willis Laurence James, John Lovell Jr., Langston Hughes, Charles W. Chesnutt, Alan Lomax, Ralph Ellison, A. Philip Randolph, Newbell Niles Puckett, Roger D. Abrahams, and many others. Readers cannot help coming away from this book with a new appreciation of the nature and richness of African American folklore. For those with little or no previous knowledge of this heterogeneous and spellbinding lore Mother Wit from the Laughing Barrel will be an eye-opening encounter. Drawn out of the deep, rich well of African American culture, these essays convey the import of the black folk experience for all Americans. No library or individual with a serious interest in African American folklore should fail to own this remarkable anthology.

Alan Dundes was Professor of Anthropology and Folklore at the University of California, Berkeley. Dundes received a BA in English and Masters in Teaching from Yale and his doctorate in Folklore from Indiana University. Dundes was an intrepid analyst of popular culture. His teaching about Folkloristics at UC Berkeley for over 40 years inspired many to analyze the meaning of diverse cultural forms, and he was recognized by the campus award for excellence in teaching. He received numerous awards during his lifetime including the Pitre Prize for Lifetime Achievement in Folklore, a Guggenheim, and an NEH fellowship. A Freudian Folklorist, Dundes believed that the psychoanalytic approach to the analysis of jokes and other forms of folklore would enable society to address difficult problems by making the unconscious conscious.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780878054787
ISBN 10	0878054782
Title	Mother Wit from the Laughing Barrel
Author	Alan Dundes
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	University Press of Mississippi
Year published	1990-12-30
Number of pages	277
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable