"Although minstrel shows have all but disappeared from the American consciousness in the last decade [pub. 1978], Engle argues that as an authentic folk art they provide rare opportunities for insight into the nineteenth-century American mass mentality. Students of American culture will find the literature of minstrelsy that Engle has ably collected to be of value not only for what it shows about the use of the stage as a medium for mass cultural expression, but for what it reveals about the tastes, values, and prejudices of the idealized American Common Man during the nineteenth century"--From dust jacket.