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Author: J. D. Stahl
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 0820341126
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 252
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Book Description
Often regarded as the quintessential American author, Mark Twain in fact mined his knowledge and experience of Europe as assiduously as he did his adventures on the Mississippi and in the American West. In this challenging and original study, J. D. Stall looks closely at various Twain works with European settings and traces the manner in which the great writer redefined European notions of class into American concepts of gender, identity, and society. Stahl not only examines such famous writings as The Innocents Abroad, The Prince and the Pauper, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, and the "Mysterious Stranger" manuscripts but also treats a number of neglected works, including 1601, "A Memorable Midnight Experience", and Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc. In these writings, Stahl shows, Twain utilized the terms and symbols of European society and history to express his deepest concerns involving father–son relationships, the legitimation of parentage, female political and sexual power, the victimization of "good" women, and, ultimately, the desire to bridge or even destroy the barriers between the sexes. The "exoticism" of foreign culture—with its kings and queens, priests, and aristocrats—furnished Twain with some especially potent images of power, authority, and tradition. These images, Stahl argues, were "plastic material in Mark Twain's hands", enabling the writer to explore the uncertainties and ambiguities of gender in America: what it meant to be a man in Victorian America; what Twain thought it meant to be a woman; how men and women did, could, and should relate to each other. Stahl's approach yields a wealth of fresh insights into Twain's work. In discussing The Innocents Abroad, for example, he analyzes the emergence of the "Mark Twain" persona as part of a quest for cultural authority that often took the form of sexual role-playing. He also demonstrates that The Prince and the Pauper, even more strikingly than Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, embodies the writer's central myth of orphaned sons searching for surrogate fathers. His reading of A Connecticut Yankee is a tour de force, uncovering the psychological contradictions in Twain's political aspirations toward democratic equality. Stahl's book is an important contribution to literary scholarship, informed by psychology, gender study, cultural theory, and traditional Twain criticism. It confirms Mark Twain's debt to European culture even as it illuminates his re-envisioning of that culture in his own uniquely American way.
Author: J. D. Stahl
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 0820341126
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 252
Get Book Here
Book Description
Often regarded as the quintessential American author, Mark Twain in fact mined his knowledge and experience of Europe as assiduously as he did his adventures on the Mississippi and in the American West. In this challenging and original study, J. D. Stall looks closely at various Twain works with European settings and traces the manner in which the great writer redefined European notions of class into American concepts of gender, identity, and society. Stahl not only examines such famous writings as The Innocents Abroad, The Prince and the Pauper, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, and the "Mysterious Stranger" manuscripts but also treats a number of neglected works, including 1601, "A Memorable Midnight Experience", and Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc. In these writings, Stahl shows, Twain utilized the terms and symbols of European society and history to express his deepest concerns involving father–son relationships, the legitimation of parentage, female political and sexual power, the victimization of "good" women, and, ultimately, the desire to bridge or even destroy the barriers between the sexes. The "exoticism" of foreign culture—with its kings and queens, priests, and aristocrats—furnished Twain with some especially potent images of power, authority, and tradition. These images, Stahl argues, were "plastic material in Mark Twain's hands", enabling the writer to explore the uncertainties and ambiguities of gender in America: what it meant to be a man in Victorian America; what Twain thought it meant to be a woman; how men and women did, could, and should relate to each other. Stahl's approach yields a wealth of fresh insights into Twain's work. In discussing The Innocents Abroad, for example, he analyzes the emergence of the "Mark Twain" persona as part of a quest for cultural authority that often took the form of sexual role-playing. He also demonstrates that The Prince and the Pauper, even more strikingly than Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, embodies the writer's central myth of orphaned sons searching for surrogate fathers. His reading of A Connecticut Yankee is a tour de force, uncovering the psychological contradictions in Twain's political aspirations toward democratic equality. Stahl's book is an important contribution to literary scholarship, informed by psychology, gender study, cultural theory, and traditional Twain criticism. It confirms Mark Twain's debt to European culture even as it illuminates his re-envisioning of that culture in his own uniquely American way.
Author: Linda A. Morris
Publisher: University of Missouri Press
ISBN: 0826266193
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 197
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Book Description
Huckleberry Finn dressing as a girl is a famously comic scene in Mark Twain's novel but hardly out of character--for the author, that is. Twain "troubled gender" in much of his otherwise traditional fiction, depicting children whose sexual identities are switched at birth, tomboys, same-sex married couples, and even a male French painter who impersonates his own fictive sister and becomes engaged to another man. This book explores Mark Twain's extensive use of cross-dressing across his career by exposing the substantial cast of characters who masqueraded as members of the opposite sex or who otherwise defied gender expectations. Linda Morris grounds her study in an understanding of the era's theatrical cross-dressing and changing mores and even events in the Clemens household. She examines and interprets Twain's exploration of characters who transgress gendered conventions while tracing the degree to which themes of gender disruption interact with other themes, such as his critique of race, his concern with death in his classic "boys' books," and his career-long preoccupation with twins and twinning. Approaching familiar texts in surprising new ways, Morris reexamines the relationship between Huck and Jim; discusses racial and gender crossing in Pudd'nhead Wilson; and sheds new light on Twain's difficulty in depicting the most famous cross-dresser in history, Joan of Arc. She also considers a number of his later "transvestite tales" that feature transgressive figures such as Hellfire Hotchkiss, who is hampered by her "misplaced sex." Morris challenges views of Twain that see his work as reinforcing traditional notions of gender along sharply divided lines. She shows that Twain depicts cross-dressing sometimes as comic or absurd, other times as darkly tragic--but that even at his most playful, he contests traditional Victorian notions about the fixity of gender roles. Analyzing such characteristics of Twain's fiction as his fascination with details of clothing and the ever-present element of play, Morris shows us his understanding that gender, like race, is a social construction--and above all a performance. Gender Play in Mark Twain: Cross-Dressing and Transgression broadens our understanding of the writer as it lends rich insight into his works.
Author: Laura E. Skandera Trombley
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 9780812216196
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 252
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Book Description
The field of Mark Twain biography has been dominated by men, and Samuel Clemens himself - riverboat pilot, Western correspondent, silver prospector, world traveler - has been traditionally portrayed as a man's man. The publication of Laura E. Skandera-Trombley's Mark Twain in the Company of Women, however, marks a significant departure from conventional scholarship. Skandera-Trombley, the first woman to write a scholarly biography of Mark Twain, contends that Clemens intentionally surrounded himself with women, and that his capacity to produce extended fictions had almost as much to do with the environment shaped by his female family as with the talent and genius of the writer himself. Women helped Clemens to define his boundaries, both personal and literary. Women shaped his life, edited his books, and provided models for his fictional characters. Clemens read and corresponded with female authors, and often actively promoted their careers. Skandera-Trombley seeks to combine a biographical study of Clemens's life with his beloved wife, Olivia (Livy) Langdon, and their three daughters, Susy, Clara, and Jean, with new readings of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc. Several crucial areas are investigated: the nature of Clemens's family participation in his writing process, the degree to which their experiences as women during the mid- and late nineteenth century affected his writing, and the extent to which the loss of his family may have impeded and ultimately ended his ability to write lengthy narratives. Skandera-Trombley points out that in marrying Livy, Clemens not only joined a family of substantial means, but also entered one active in thesuffragist, abolitionist, and other reformist movements, which had deep roots in the progressive community of Elmira, New York. Mark Twain in the Company of Women will be of interest to Twain scholars and readers as well as students in American studies, women's studies, nineteenth-century history, and political and cultural studies.
Author: Peter Stoneley
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521405492
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 230
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Book Description
In this 1992 book, Peter Stoneley analyzes Mark Twain's preoccupation with the nature and value of the 'feminine'.
Author: Roberta S. Trites
Publisher: University of Iowa Press
ISBN: 1587297701
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 233
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Book Description
Trites argues that Twain and Alcott wrote on similar topics because they were so deeply affected by the Civil War, by cataclysmic emotional and financial losses in their families, by their cultural immersion in the tenets of Protestant philosophy, and by sexual tensions that may have stimulated their interest in writing for adolescents, Trites demonstrates how the authors participated in a cultural dynamic that marked the changing nature of adolescence in America, provoking a literary sentiment that continues to inform young adult literature. Both intuited that the transitory nature of adolescence makes it ripe for expression about human potential for change and reform.
Author: Randall K. Knoper
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520086197
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 264
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Book Description
"Clarifies why understanding Mark Twain's writing is essential to understanding enduring patterns and problems in American culture. Conversely, it compellingly illustrates why one does not fully understand Mark Twain's work unless one has some understanding of America's preoccupation with performance, conspicuous display, and the mental sciences."--Howard Horwitz, author of "By the Law of Nature: Form and Value in Nineteenth-Century America" "In place of the strictly literary frame of reference that has previously organized the Twain canon, Knoper productively focuses on the spectrum of theatrical attitudes whereby Twain reconfigured his culture's race and gender hierarchies into the power to construct social realities differently. This work is sure to play a significant role in the reinvention of Mark Twain for the New American Studies."--Donald E. Pease, editor of "Revisionary Interventions into the Americanist Canon" "Knoper takes up quintessential aspects of Twain's writings, mind, and career. . . . [He] is brilliant in enunciating clearly and coherently ideas and attitudes that Twain either held confusedly or intimated almost unintentionally."--Louis J. Budd, author of "Our Mark Twain"
Author: Carla Shelley Anderson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 94
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Book Description
Author: Edith Petersilia Mayo
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 216
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Book Description
Author: Susan K. Harris
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521553841
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 221
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Book Description
Passionate readers both, Olivia Langdon and Mark Twain courted through books, spelling out their expectations through literary references as they corresponded during their frequent separations. Working with Langdon's own letters and diaries as well as Twain's, Harris traces the progress of their courtship within the larger context of Victorian American culture, showing how the couple negotiated their relationship through the mediums of literature, material culture, and social and familial dynamics.
Author: Peter Messent
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1119045398
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 597
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Book Description
This broad-ranging companion brings together respected American and European critics and a number of up-and-coming scholars to provide an overview of Twain, his background, his writings, and his place in American literary history. One of the most broad-ranging volumes to appear on Mark Twain in recent years Brings together respected Twain critics and a number of younger scholars in the field to provide an overview of this central figure in American literature Places special emphasis on the ways in which Twain's works remain both relevant and important for a twenty-first century audience A concluding essay evaluates the changing landscape of Twain criticism