Boatright published Folk Laughter on the American Frontier in 1949. His work stressed the importance of studying folklore in its total cultural context and of relating it to the lives of those who practiced it. Unlike many of his contemporaries who embellished folk tales with literary touches, Boatright retold stories in an unadorned and concise style much closer to true folk narration and recognized that in oral performance these tales were very molded by the immediate situation of their telling. The book won him national recognition as a folklorist. It presented the career and stories of a folk character comparable to Mike Fink or Johnny Appleseed.
Gib Morgan: Minstrel of the Oil Fields (1945), Boatright's second collection of tall tales, moved from the ranch to the oil patch. In 1934 Boatright published Tall Tales from Texas Cow Camps, a collection of stories he had learned in his youth and later from cow-country students. Frank Dobie asked him to contribute a tale, "The Devil's Grotto," to the next publication of the Texas Folklore Society. Boatright began his career as a folklorist in 1925, when J. Except for one year, 1934–35, when he was at the College of Mines and Metallurgy (now the University of Texas at El Paso), he remained at the University of Texas until he retired in 1968, rising through the ranks from junior instructor to full professor and chairman of the English department. He taught at Sul Ross State Teachers College from 1923 until 1926, when he joined the staff of the University of Texas. He received his master's degree at the University of Texas in 1923 and his Ph.D. He finished his high school education at West Texas State Teachers College (now West Texas A&M University), where he earned a delayed bachelor's degree in 1922, after serving two years in the army in 1917–19. In early years he was educated alternately by a governess on the ranch and at school in town. He was the youngest of ten children in a ranching family and the grandnephew of pioneer cattlemen and merchants Mody and Sam Coggin of Brownwood. Mody Boatright, folklorist and educator, the son of Eldon and Frances Ann (McAuley) Boatright, was born in Mitchell County, Texas, on October 16, 1896.
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