American Lit Relit: a short history of American Literature for long-suffering students

by Richard Armour, Campbell Grant (Illustrator)

This book leads you irreverently and irresponsibly through the pages of American literature. You may even learn something. Richard Armour, that madcap-and-gown satirist, goes his merry way from such Puritan authors as Michael Wigglesworth and Cotton Mather to such not-so-Puritan authors as O'Neill, Hemingway, and Faulkner. Sense and nonsense play a wild game of tag, having a field day in a field often approached to solemnly. The author gives his special kind of literate humor by combining word play, understatement, exaggeration, parody, free association, and irony. The survey course in American literature will never be the same.

Genres: Humor, Nonfiction

160 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1964

About the author

Richard Armour, a college professor of English who specialized in Chaucer and the English Romantic poets, was best known as a prolific author of light verse and wacky parodies of academic scholarship. He was a professor of English at Scripps College in Claremont from 1945 to 1966.

Armour was raised in Pomona, California, where his father owned a drugstore. He graduated from Pomona College, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, then obtained his master's and Ph.D. in English literature at Harvard. He was a Harvard research fellow at the Victoria and Albert Museum library in London.

Reviews

[Moonkiszt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Get your Patriotic on!!!!

[Ellen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love intelligent men who can be hilariously silly!

[TrumanCoyote · Rating 4 out of 5]

Maybe relying a bit too much on puns throughout...but lotsa fun nonetheless.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's certainly had to compare a book like this to a serious novel, but I found it hilarious. If you enjoy puns and "Road to" movies, you'll love it.

[Edmund Kubiak · Rating 5 out of 5]

Believe it or not I first encountered this book in 1970. I had just started college and was taking a course in Am. Lit. and decided I needed a break from the stuffy stuff I was reading. I found the book hilarious (I'd already read the author's Twisted Tales from Shakespeare so I knew his humor.) Since it was published in 1970 we don't go much farther than Faulkner and Hemingway so bear that in mind if you read the book; but let me tell you, the work is still very funny in the way only Richard Armour can be (and if you should ever be YouTubing, get a load of Armour's appearance on Groucho Marx's You Bet Your Life. Armour manages to give Groucho a run for his money (and Groucho looks decidedly perturbed!))

[AnnaRose · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting and humorous. It would be interesting to have a newer edition of it.