Strange Talk: The Politics of Dialect Literature in Gilded Age America

by Gavin Jones

Book Overview

Late-nineteenth-century America was crazy about dialect: vernacular varieties of American English entertained mass audiences in "local color" stories, in realist novels, and in poems and plays. But dialect was also at the heart of anxious debates about the moral degeneration of urban life, the ethnic impact of foreign immigration, the black presence in white society, and the female influence on masculine authority. Celebrations of the rustic raciness...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0520214218
• ISBN13: 9780520214217
• Release Date: October 1999
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Length: 299 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.0" x 9.0"