Davy Crockett's Riproarious Shemales and Sentimental Sisters - Hardcover

Lofaro, Michael

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0811704998 ISBN 13: 9780811704991

Publisher: Stackpole Books, 2001

Synopsis

Conceived as a marketing device by nineteenth-century publishers hoping to gain a share of the lucrative almanac market, The Crockett Almanacs became the best-selling and longest-running series of comic almanacs published in the United States before the Civil War. Michael Lofaro explores one of the Almanacs' most entertaining and intriguing aspects: the adventures of backwoods women. Their portrayals, which range from the heroic to the satiric, from the comic to the sentimental, create uproarious laughter and provoke serious commentary-often in the same tale.

About this title

About the Author:

Michael Lofaro has published numerous works on frontier America including The Life and Adventures of Daniel Boone; Davy Crockett: The Man, The Legend, The Legacy 1786-1986, Crockett at Two Hundred; and The Tall Tales of Davy Crockett: The Second Nashville Series of Crockett Almanacs 1839-1841. He is a professor of English at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville.

From Library Journal:

These amusing tales were originally published in The Crockett Almanacs, a series of humorous almanacs that appeared between 1835 and 1856 and were narrated by Davy Crockett, the superhero from Tennessee. While 18th-century almanacs had served as guides for practical problems, like weather predictions, by the 19th century they had become popular sources of entertainment. The Crockett Alamanacs were the longest-running comic almanac of the period. Lofaro has gathered together the Crockett tales dealing with women, or backwoods "shemales," whose physical characteristics and exploits resemble exaggerated males of outrageous and humorous strength and courage. In "Shemales, Sentiment, and Stereotypes," he explores the characters, the images, and the political and social symbolism of the tales. He observes that the extreme masculinity of the women portrayed in the almanacs was a playful device for ridiculing the ideal of 19th-century femininity. The tales themselves, organized and presented by topic, are great fun, but it is the intelligence of the format and the sophistication of the analysis that raise this collection above the merely amusing and make it a revealing study of the imagery of 19th-century women. Recommended for public and academic libraries. Bonnie Collier, Yale Law Lib., New Haven
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Stackpole Books
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0811704998
• ISBN 13: 9780811704991
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 320