Constructing Mark Twain

Constructing Mark Twain PDF Author: Laura E. Skandera Trombley
Publisher: University of Missouri Press
ISBN: 0826219683
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 267

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Book Description
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.

Constructing Mark Twain

Constructing Mark Twain PDF Author: Laura E. Skandera Trombley
Publisher: University of Missouri Press
ISBN: 0826219683
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 267

Get Book Here

Book Description
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.

Making Mark Twain Work in the Classroom

Making Mark Twain Work in the Classroom PDF Author: James S. Leonard
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 9780822322979
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 332

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Book Description
A collection of articles on Twain's work expressing a broad range of critical perspectives and pedagogical methods, intended to address race, gender and class issues in the classroom.

The Making of Mark Twain

The Making of Mark Twain PDF Author: John Lauber
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
Tells of the early years of Sam Clemens and the stages by which he becomes Mark Twain.

Mark Twain & France

Mark Twain & France PDF Author: Paula Harrington
Publisher: University of Missouri Press
ISBN: 0826273777
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
Blending cultural history, biography, and literary criticism, this book explores how one of America's greatest icons used the French to help build a new sense of what it is to be “American” in the second half of the nineteenth century. While critics have generally dismissed Mark Twain’s relationship with France as hostile, Harrington and Jenn see Twain’s use of the French as a foil to help construct his identity as “the representative American.” Examining new materials that detail his Montmatre study, the carte de visite album, and a chronology of his visits to France, the book offers close readings of writings that have been largely ignored, such as The Innocents Adrift manuscript and the unpublished chapters of A Tramp Abroad, combining literary analysis, socio-historical context and biographical research.

Mark Twain, the Man in the Making

Mark Twain, the Man in the Making PDF Author: Elizabeth Olivia Steen
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 130

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Book Description


Mark Twain and the Spiritual Crisis of His Age

Mark Twain and the Spiritual Crisis of His Age PDF Author: Harold K. Bush
Publisher: University of Alabama Press
ISBN: 0817315381
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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Book Description
Mark Twain is often pictured as a severe critic of religious piety, shaking his fist at God and mocking the devout. This book highlights Twain's attractions to and engagements with the variety of religious phenomena of America in his lifetime. It offers a more complicated understanding of Twain and his literary output.

Mark Twain's Own Autobiography

Mark Twain's Own Autobiography PDF Author: Mark Twain
Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Press
ISBN: 0299234738
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 379

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Book Description
Mark Twain’s Own Autobiography stands as the last of Twain’s great yarns. Here he tells his story in his own way, freely expressing his joys and sorrows, his affections and hatreds, his rages and reverence—ending, as always, tongue-in-cheek: “Now, then, that is the tale. Some of it is true.” More than the story of a literary career, this memoir is anchored in the writer’s relation to his family—what they meant to him as a husband, father, and artist. It also brims with many of Twain’s best comic anecdotes about his rambunctious boyhood in Hannibal, his misadventures in the Nevada territory, his notorious Whittier birthday speech, his travels abroad, and more. Twain published twenty-five “Chapters from My Autobiography” in the North American Review in 1906 and 1907. “I intend that this autobiography . . . shall be read and admired a good many centuries because of its form and method—form and method whereby the past and the present are constantly brought face to face, resulting in contrasts which newly fire up the interest all along, like contact of flint with steel.” For this second edition, Michael Kiskis’s introduction references a wealth of critical work done on Twain since 1990. He also adds a discussion of literary domesticity, locating the autobiography within the history of Twain’s literary work and within Twain’s own understanding and experience of domestic concerns.

Our Mark Twain

Our Mark Twain PDF Author: Louis J. Budd
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 298

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Book Description
This study of Mark Twain as a public figure concentrates on Twain's herohood during his lifetime. Beginning with a summary of the tributes that came at Twain's death, Budd shows his stature as a public treasure. He discusses Twain's overlapping roles as lecturer, newspaperman, humorist, businessman, author, family man and reformer, as well as his continual attention to his image as he molded and sustained it through the newspaper world. Budd's analysis serves as a corrective for those who focus on Twain's private guilts and pessimism. ISBN 0-8122-7881-X : $21.95.

The Life of Mark Twain

The Life of Mark Twain PDF Author: Gary Scharnhorst
Publisher: University of Missouri Press
ISBN: 0826274307
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 779

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Book Description
Choice Outstanding Academic Title for 2020 The second volume of Gary Scharnhorst’s three-volume biography chronicles the life of Samuel Langhorne Clemens between his move with his family from Buffalo to Elmira (and then Hartford) in spring 1871 and their departure from Hartford for Europe in mid-1891. During this time he wrote and published some of his best-known works, including Roughing It, The Gilded Age, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, A Tramp Abroad, The Prince and the Pauper, Life on the Mississippi,Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. Significant events include his trips to England (1872–73) and Bermuda (1877); the controversy over his Whittier Birthday Speech in December 1877; his 1878–79 Wanderjahr on the continent; his 1882 tour of the Mississippi valley; his 1884–85 reading tour with George Washington Cable; his relationships with his publishers (Elisha Bliss, James R. Osgood, Andrew Chatto, and Charles L. Webster); the death of his son, Langdon, and the births and childhoods of his daughters Susy, Clara, and Jean; as well as the several lawsuits and personal feuds in which he was involved. During these years, too, Clemens expressed his views on racial and gender equality and turned to political mugwumpery; supported the presidential campaigns of Grover Cleveland; advocated for labor rights, international copyright, and revolution in Russia; founded his own publishing firm; and befriended former president Ulysses S. Grant, supervising the publication of Grant’s Memoirs. The Life of Mark Twain is the first multi-volume biography of Samuel Clemens to appear in more than a century and has already been hailed as the definitive Twain biography.

Mark Twain's Other Woman

Mark Twain's Other Woman PDF Author: Laura Skandera Trombley
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307474941
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
Laura Skandera Trombley, the preeminent Twain scholar at work today, reveals the never-before-read letters and daily journals of Isabel Lyon, Mark Twain’s last personal secretary. For six years, Isabel Lyon was responsible for running the aging Man in White’s chaotic household, nursing him through several illnesses and serving as his adoring audience. But after a dramatic breakup of their relationship, Twain ranted in personal letters that she was “a liar, a forger, a thief, a hypocrite, a drunkard, a sneak, a humbug, a traitor, a conspirator, a filthy-minded and salacious slut pining for seduction.” For decades, biographers omitted Isabel from the official Twain history at his decree. But now, the truth of the split is exposed at last in a story that sheds light on a lionized author’s final decade.