Editor’s Note
The essays assembled in this issue of Studies of American Humor formed part of the program for the Conference on American Humor held at Southwest Texas State University on April 11–12, 1980. They present an entertaining cross-section of the papers delivered at the conference, which ranged across nineteenth- and twentieth-century subjects and treated both major and minor creators of comic art. Because the papers were first prepared for oral presentation, their method of documentation varies more than it would in manuscripts initially designed for print.
The Conference on American Humor was conceived and designed by the late Arlin Turner, who was then the Therese Kayser Lindsey Professor of Literature at the University. Individual sessions of the conference were chaired by Professors John Gerber, J. A. Leo Lemay, and Brom Weber. On the first evening, Professor Hamlin Hill, co-author of America’s Humor, delivered a lively keynote address that described the comic and not-so-comic vicissitudes which he and Walter Blair experienced in the composition and publication of the book. At the last session, Professor Hill joined the section chairmen in a panel discussion that described some functions of humor and suggested some new directions which studies in humor might take.Professors Turner and Jack Meathenia of the Southwest Texas English Department screened the papers and made detailed preparations for the conference. Their early labors are reflected in the composition of this issue. It is my pleasure, as guest editor of the issue, to record the debt owed to them, to the Therese Kayser Lindsey Chair of Literature both for sponsoring the conference and for printing this issue, to Professors Martha L. Brunson, Robert W. Walts, and John O. Rosenbalm for helping with arrangements, and to the audience and program participants for having made the conference a pleasant one.
|
Mary Ann Wimsatt |
