Tall Tales and Urban Legends in American Literature

Canadian Association for American Studies Conference, Mount Saint Vincent University,

Halifax, NS, September 22-24, 2023

Organized by Ross Bullen (OCAD University) and Jasleen Singh (University of Toronto)

November 1st, 2022

In American Humor: A Study of National Character (1931), Constance Rourke describes the tall

tale as a “scattered” genre that necessarily exists only in “fragments” (67). Embodying elements

of the supernatural and the gothic, the genre typically centers around the figure of the pioneering

“backwoodsman,” or “simpleton.” Moreover, the tall tale is rooted in regionalism–but in

Rourke’s analysis–also ruminates on the question of the “native” or so-called “authentic”

American national character at large. Tall tales, folk tales, and urban legends have had an

appreciable impact on American literature and on articulations of the American national identity.

As a literary strategy, the tall tale allows the author to approach serious or challenging subject

matter in a way that engages a readership in both pedagogical and (provocatively) entertaining

ways. Discussing William Wells Brown’s use of comedic and tall tales in his anti-slavery

writing, Geoffrey Sanborn claims that “Brown concluded early in his career that white

Americans strongly prefer narratives of self-making that are a little ‘off,’ in which something

other than merit is at work” (9). For Brown, the naive and lucky outsider is better able to rouse

his readers’ sympathy than a conventionally virtuous and heroic protagonist. Accordingly, it is

the fantastical, the strange, or the “off” that can deliver the most prescient and serious critiques

of American identity and national ideals. Moving beyond Rourke’s and Sanborn’s focus on the

nineteenth century, in the late twentieth- and twenty-first centuries, the tall tale has morphed into

multiple genres and forms, including urban legends, memes, creepypastas (online horror

legends), and online folk figures like Slender Man or, more recently, Loab.

We welcome papers that explore any aspect of tall tales and urban legends from any period of

American and African American literature or popular culture. Please send proposals to Jasleen

Singh (ja.singh@mail.utoronto.ca) and Ross Bullen (rbullen@ocadu.ca) by January 3rd, 2023.

Works Cited

Rourke, Constance. American Humor: A Study of the National Character. New York: Harcourt,

Brace and Company, 1931.

Sanborn, Geoffrey. Plagiarama! William Wells Brown and the Aesthetic of Attractions. New

York: Columbia UP, 2016.