Walter Blair (April 21, 1900 – June 29, 1992)
/ref> was a professor in the University of Chicago English department who was known for his study of American folklore, humor and tall tales.
Born in Spokane, Washington
Spokane ( ) is the most populous city in eastern Washington and the county seat of Spokane County, Washington, United States. It lies along the Spokane River, adjacent to the Selkirk Mountains, and west of the Rocky Mountain foothills, south o ...
, he graduated from Yale University
Yale University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701, Yale is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Stat ...
undergrad in 1923 and got his Ph.D. in English from U of C in 1931. He taught at Chicago from 1929 to 1968, and served as the chairman of his department for nine of those years (1951-1960).
Works included ''Native American Humor: 1800 to 1900'' (1937), ''Horse Sense in American Humor'' (1942), ''Tall Tale America: A Legendary History of Our Humorous Heroes'' (1944, multiple reprints), ''Half-Horse Half-Alligator: The Growth of the Mike Fink Legend'', ''Davy Crockett: Truth and Legend'', ''Mark Twain & Huck Finn'' (1960), and a mystery novel called ''Candidate for Murder'', the last of which was published under the pseudonym Mortimer Post.
Notable students of Blair included Nobel laureate Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow (born Solomon Bellows; June 10, 1915April 5, 2005) was a Canadian-American writer. For his literary work, Bellow was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the 1976 Nobel Prize in Literature, and the National Medal of Arts. He is the only write ...
and Pulitzer Prize winner Philip Roth
Philip Milton Roth (; March 19, 1933 – May 22, 2018) was an American novelist and short-story writer. Roth's fiction—often set in his birthplace of Newark, New Jersey—is known for its intensely autobiographical character, for philosophical ...
, as well as four other Pulitzer Prize winners.
In May 1992, he won the Distinguished Scholar Award of the Mark Twain Circle, an association of Twain scholars.
Blair was a resident of the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago.
References
External links
ChiTrib obit: Walter Blair
{{DEFAULTSORT:Blair, Walter
University of Chicago faculty
1992 deaths
American folklorists
1900 births