AMERICAN FRONTIERSMEN IN 19TH CENTURY AS REPRESENTED IN AUGUSTUS B. LONGSTREET’S “THE FIGHT”

Abstract

Particular literary works have a great significance that they can also act as historical
documents through which readers can trace back the phenomena of the society in the
era in which those literary works were written. One of those literary works is
Augustus Baldwin Longstreet’s “The Fight”, a short story which was said to be the
cornerstone of the birth of southwestern humor literature. Falling into the category of
literature of the frontier, this short story depicts the lives of Georgian people as
frontiersmen in the early 19th century. This study’s objective is to unveil how
American frontiersmen is represented by the author and how this representation is
related to the Georgian society at that time. This study found that there was a history
of violence among frontiersmen, there was glorifying masculinity, and there was dirteating
perversion due to the harshness of the nature of the frontier and the social
condition at that time.

Key words: humor, southwestern humor, frontier, frontiersmen