American Literature / Unit 11 AML 1017 short lesson, about 20 seconds
Bret Harte and the Mining Camp Story
Captions available
The idea
Bret Harte made the California mining camp a literary setting, populating it with gamblers, prostitutes and drunks who behave better than the respectable people who expel them. His formula of sentimental reversal was enormously popular and set the pattern for western fiction.
In practice
A camp, and a virtue found in outcasts.
Where people slip
The reversal became a formula quickly.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
Something wrong in this lesson? Flag it