The Wigwam and the Cabin

by William Gilmore Simms, David Moltke-Hansen (Introduction)

Overview

The Wigwam and the Cabin is a collection of border stories about the southwestern frontier. The collection is generally considered the best of Simms's short fiction. The Wigwam and the Cabin represents frontier humor, particularly the stories "Grayling; or 'Murder Will Out,'" "The Two Camps: A Legend of the Old North State," "The Lazy Crow; A Story of the Cornfield," and "Caloya: or, The Loves of the Driver." Not only do these stories draw upon the familiar subject matter of frontier humor, but they also contain stock frontier humor characters and a box narrative frame—a device that provides a cultured gentleman (outsider) who establishes the setting where an inner story is given in frontier vernacular; such a frame enables the humorist to enjoy the "uneducated rustic characters while maintaining their own cultural and social distance from such figures." Other notable stories in the collection highlight Simms's, at times, progressive rendering of Native American characters, including Oakatibbe, or the Choctaw Sampson, Jocassee. A Cherokee Legend, and The Arm-Chair of Tustenuggee. A Tradition of the Catawba.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781611170641
Publisher:	University of South Carolina Press
Publication date:	03/03/2013
Series:	Projects of the Simms Initiatives
Edition description:	Revised ed.
Pages:	518
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.25(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

John Caldwell Guilds is Distinguished Professor of Humanties at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. Considered the authority on the work of William Gilmore Simms, he has authored Simms: A Literary Life and William Gilmore Simms and the American Frontier.