Paul Bunyan: Last of the Frontier Demigods - Softcover

Hoffman, Daniel

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0803272162 ISBN 13: 9780803272163

Publisher: Univ of Nebraska Pr, 1983

Synopsis

Paul Bunyan is the giant of American folklore, so huge that several states claim him as their own—some say he was born in Michigan, others claim Minnesota, still others, Maine. Daniel Hoffman's Paul Bunyan shows that the hero's origins are more surprising still. 
      More than another recounting of Paul Bunyan's adventures, this book is a classic of American folklore. First published in 1949, this new edition traces the clues of origin to turn-of-the-century logging camps, to the sparse record of actual folktales, and then to the ways these yarns were repeated, revised, simplified, or distorted.

About this title

About the Author:

Author of eight other books of poetry, Daniel Hoffman has published several critical studies, of which the best known may be Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe, also a finalist for the National Book Award. Hoffman taught for ten years at Swarthmore College and then, for twenty-seven, at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is Poet in Residence and Felix E. Schelling Professor of English Emeritus. From 1988 to 1999, he served as Poet in Residence of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City and administered the American Poets' Corner. In 2004 he received the Aiken Taylor Award for Modern American Poetry, the seventeenth poet so recognized by The Sewanee Review, America's oldest literary quarterly.

Review:

". . . a superlative study of the legend's proliferation. . . . Hoffman sharply divides the true folktale from the popularization, and that in turn from the work of art . . . [and] for the first time clarifies the important concept of popularization." -- Richard M. Dorson, Yale Review

About this edition

• Publisher: Univ of Nebraska Pr
• Publication date: 1983
• ISBN 10: 0803272162
• ISBN 13: 9780803272163
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 243