Constructing Mark Twain: New Directions in ScholarshipMichael J. Kiskis, Laura E. Skandera-Trombley University of Missouri Press, 2001 - 252 Seiten The thirteen essays in this collection combine to offer a complex and deeply nuanced picture of Samuel Clemens. With the purpose of straying from the usual notions of Clemens (most notably the Clemens/Twain split that has ruled Twain scholarship for over thirty years), the editors have assembled contributions from a wide range of Twain scholars. As a whole, the collection argues that it is time we approach Clemens not as a shadow behind the literary persona but as a complex and intricate creator of stories, a creator who is deeply embedded in the political events of his time and who used a mix of literary, social, and personal experience to fuel the movements of his pen. The essays illuminate Clemens's connections with people and events not usually given the spotlight and introduce us to Clemens as a man deeply embroiled in the process of making literary gold out of everyday experiences. From Clemens's wonderings on race and identity to his looking to family and domesticity as defining experiences, from musings on the language that Clemens used so effectively to consideration of the images and processes of composition, these essays challenge long-held notions of why Clemens was so successful and so influential a writer. While that search itself is not new, the varied approaches within this collection highlight markedly inventive ways of reading the life and work of Samuel Clemens. |
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... letters. New films are under production, and two documentaries of his life are in the pre- and postproduction stages. Scholars gather at conferences and end- lessly argue about Clemens's life, legacy, and sometimes even his literature ...
... letters, quips, and maxims are, at the very least, a multilayered mono- logue that inspires and exhorts comment. Clemens swam in the current of his increasingly modern culture by reading and writing. And, like him, we swim in the ...
... letters. Taking Brown's comments as my lead, I intend to examine Twain's tie to the "Other American tradition" of literary domesticity—to the defi- nition of home, the boundaries of home, and the freedom to be gained by belonging. Mark ...
... letters Sam is presented as the family stalwart, able to gain success, able to solve problems, able to care for and provide for the others, especially for his older brother Orion and his family, and for their mother, Jane. Among the ...
... letters to William Dean Howells about the deaths of Susie or Livy with dry eyes . Sam could not bring himself , at age seventy - four , to travel to Jean's burial at the family grave site in Elmira . Against these harrowing sadnesses ...
Inhalt
13 | |
28 | |
To his preferred friends he revealed his true character | 50 |
Mark Twains Mechanical Marvels | 72 |
Steamboats Cocaine and Paper Money | 87 |
Mark Twain Isabel Lyon and the Talking Cure | 101 |
The Minstrel and the Detective | 122 |
Huck Jim and the BlackandWhite Fallacy | 139 |
Black Genes and White Lies | 169 |
Mark Twain in Large and Small | 191 |
Who Killed Mark Twain? Long Live Samuel Clemens | 218 |
CONTRIBUTORS | 239 |