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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... perhaps, provide several hints for the major reevaluation that is sure to come. As readers and teachers and commentators on the life and career of Samuel Clemens, we considered it important to reflect on the rapid changes now under way ...
... perhaps it is not as bad as all that. There is a strength at the center of Clemens's character, a strength that assigned him an essential poise as events and ideas swirled around him. His was an essentially modern con- sciousness that ...
... (perhaps as the quintessential or iconic outsider) and his writings, ultimately, as artifacts, as composites of the ideas and trends and values accumulated from the society with and within which he traveled. The tension and conversation ...
... (perhaps) abuse icons. Not challenging the scholarship that created the icon suggests an unwillingness to reconsider the history of critical traditions and the way those traditions have been and are tied to time-bound perspectives ...
... perhaps even more im- portant, his wife, Olivia Langdon.4 Also, questions of Clemens's approach to family life have taken on new power as scholars have come to see personal context as a valuable source for insights into Clemens's ...
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 |