Pub Date : 2023-11-01DOI: 10.5325/marktwaij.21.1.v
Ben Click
This issue marks the twentieth anniversary of The Mark Twain Annual! Like many great ideas regarding Mark Twain, the idea for this journal began over drinks and cigars. Although the story of this journal’s genesis has been retold in past issues (volumes 1 and 6), I recall it once more on its twentieth anniversary.In May 2001, at the American Literature Association Conference (ALA), on a balcony in Cambridge, Massachusetts, several members of the Mark Twain Circle gathered to socialize when John Bird openly bemoaned that no academic journal devoted to critical articles on Mark Twain existed. At that moment, the late Michael Kiskis exclaimed, “You’re right!,” turned to Bird and said, “And you’re going to be the editor!” Discussions about what the journal’s mission would be continued at the Elmira Conference that August (pedagogical essays were added as part of the annual’s mission). In May 2002, at the Circle business meeting, the name of the annual was officially voted on, and Bird was chosen as its inaugural editor, with annual publication to come every fall, starting with the first issue published in 2003.In keeping with its mission, this issue features both critical and pedagogical pieces. Our critical essays begin with Seth Murray’s new take on the oft-neglected “Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven” arguing that it is more than literary miscellany from Twain’s late writings or a caricature of Elizabeth Stuart Phelps’s religious sentimentalism; rather it is “a careful meditation on a series of questions—belief, mortality, justice, and the quest for the most humane arrangement of life.” The next two essays offer fresh insights about A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. Joshua Fagan posits that Connecticut Yankee “should be considered specifically in the context of late-Victorian, fin-de-siècle medievalism, not simply as a reaction against starry-eyed medievalists, but as a work engaging with the medievalist literature and historiography of this period.” As Alan Manning and Nicole Amare’s title states, they explore “Mark Twain’s Early Contribution to Fantasy and Science Fiction and ‘Mormon’ Narratives of Reconciliation.” They illustrate a shared thematic concern over reconciliation through transcendence as seen in the third-way reconciliation motif employed in Connecticut Yankee and The Book of Mormon. Next, Linda Morris examines letters between Susy Clemens and fellow Bryn Mawr classmate Louise Bronwell, her sister Clara, and their mother Livy. Morris’s portrait of Susy in these last six years also provides insights about Samuel Clemens as a father as well as Mark Twain’s writings (after Susy’s death) that challenged traditional gender expectations of the time.The final two essays in this section investigate the ironic and hypocritical public belief in American exceptionalism and patriotism, how Twain exposed it in his later writings, and how he was later appropriated to support it. Megan McNamara traces Twain’s efforts to undermine Ame
{"title":"EDITOR’S RE: MARKS","authors":"Ben Click","doi":"10.5325/marktwaij.21.1.v","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/marktwaij.21.1.v","url":null,"abstract":"This issue marks the twentieth anniversary of The Mark Twain Annual! Like many great ideas regarding Mark Twain, the idea for this journal began over drinks and cigars. Although the story of this journal’s genesis has been retold in past issues (volumes 1 and 6), I recall it once more on its twentieth anniversary.In May 2001, at the American Literature Association Conference (ALA), on a balcony in Cambridge, Massachusetts, several members of the Mark Twain Circle gathered to socialize when John Bird openly bemoaned that no academic journal devoted to critical articles on Mark Twain existed. At that moment, the late Michael Kiskis exclaimed, “You’re right!,” turned to Bird and said, “And you’re going to be the editor!” Discussions about what the journal’s mission would be continued at the Elmira Conference that August (pedagogical essays were added as part of the annual’s mission). In May 2002, at the Circle business meeting, the name of the annual was officially voted on, and Bird was chosen as its inaugural editor, with annual publication to come every fall, starting with the first issue published in 2003.In keeping with its mission, this issue features both critical and pedagogical pieces. Our critical essays begin with Seth Murray’s new take on the oft-neglected “Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven” arguing that it is more than literary miscellany from Twain’s late writings or a caricature of Elizabeth Stuart Phelps’s religious sentimentalism; rather it is “a careful meditation on a series of questions—belief, mortality, justice, and the quest for the most humane arrangement of life.” The next two essays offer fresh insights about A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. Joshua Fagan posits that Connecticut Yankee “should be considered specifically in the context of late-Victorian, fin-de-siècle medievalism, not simply as a reaction against starry-eyed medievalists, but as a work engaging with the medievalist literature and historiography of this period.” As Alan Manning and Nicole Amare’s title states, they explore “Mark Twain’s Early Contribution to Fantasy and Science Fiction and ‘Mormon’ Narratives of Reconciliation.” They illustrate a shared thematic concern over reconciliation through transcendence as seen in the third-way reconciliation motif employed in Connecticut Yankee and The Book of Mormon. Next, Linda Morris examines letters between Susy Clemens and fellow Bryn Mawr classmate Louise Bronwell, her sister Clara, and their mother Livy. Morris’s portrait of Susy in these last six years also provides insights about Samuel Clemens as a father as well as Mark Twain’s writings (after Susy’s death) that challenged traditional gender expectations of the time.The final two essays in this section investigate the ironic and hypocritical public belief in American exceptionalism and patriotism, how Twain exposed it in his later writings, and how he was later appropriated to support it. Megan McNamara traces Twain’s efforts to undermine Ame","PeriodicalId":41060,"journal":{"name":"Mark Twain Annual","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135411048","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-11-01DOI: 10.5325/marktwaij.21.1.0040
Alan Manning, Nicole Amare
Abstract Mark Twain is best known in popular culture as the author of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. It is somewhat less widely known that he wrote on the leading edge of the writing genre we now know as Fantasy and Science Fiction (F&SF). He stands with Edgar Allan Poe, Jules Verne, and H. G. Wells as one of the early developers of basic themes that are with us still: time travel, political dystopia, alternative history, future history, ESP, alien/demonic visitation, travel to alien worlds, and world-altering inventions. Twain likewise had fictional alignments with Latter-day Saint theology, including the theme of reconciliation through transcendence. Transcendent reconciliation is thus the driving force behind the general plot strategy of the most successful examples of Latter-day Saint fantasy/sci-fi and Twain’s writings as well.
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Pub Date : 2023-11-01DOI: 10.5325/marktwaij.21.1.0170
Nathaniel Williams
Animals in the American Classics: How Natural History Inspired Great Fiction. Ed. John Cullen Gruesser. Texas A&M UP, 2022. 304 pp. $38.00, cloth.This is an absolutely beautiful book featuring numerous full-color illustrations including photographs, maps, naturalists’ drawings, and reproduced advertisements that portray the animals in each literary work covered. These contextual images augment strong essays, most of them centered on already well-established literary works including “The Gold-Bug,” Moby-Dick, and The Call of the Wild. John Bird’s essay on Twain’s “Jumping Frog” story exemplifies the best aspects of this approach; he focuses on the single work but brings in evidence from throughout Twain’s fiction, letters, and life. He also does an admirable job of covering the tangled publication history of rewrites and retitlings that Twain’s landmark sketch endured. Bird finds “underlying grim reality” in several of the “Jumping Frog” tale’s recounted events (116). He also notes the tale’s continued influence on art and at county fairs, concluding “Unlike much nineteenth-century American humor, ‘The Jumping Frog’ lives on” (129). Anyone teaching Twain’s sketch, from secondary-level to graduate courses, could find useful lecture content to share from Bird’s essay in this affordable, visually riveting scholarly book. Haunted Property: Slavery and the Gothic. Sarah Gilbreath Ford. UP of Mississippi, 2020. 248 pp. $110, cloth; $35, paper.Ford considers Pudd’nhead Wilson in a context spanning from Harriet Jacobs’s 1861 narrative to Natasha Tretheway’s 2006 poetry collection. Indeed, the book’s strength lies its long-view of the two topics in its subtitle (the Gothic literary tradition and U.S. slavery’s practice and legacy). That focus enables treating Twain alongside twentieth-century writers, such as Octavia Butler and Sherley Ann Williams, who are rarely connected with him. Ford builds from scholarship that foregrounds slavery’s role in defining ongoing legal and personal understandings of property ownership, and she addresses moments when fear over “loss of personhood” becomes Gothic horror. Roxy in Pudd’nhead Wilson lives such horror as someone within a system that will not “allow her to keep her son: he can either be killed, sold, or white” (85). Anyone covering Twain and the Gothic—or just curious to see Twain treated on the same page as some more recent literary giants—will find Ford’s book of high interest. Writing the Mind: Social Cognition in Nineteenth-Century American Fiction. Hannah Walser. Stanford UP, 2022. 272 pp. $60.00, cloth.Walser examines theory of mind (ToM) and the portrayal of cognition—or lack thereof—in an array of mostly antebellum books. In doing so, she complicates how we understand the truism that novels shape the way readers understand their fellow humans’ minds. When the book culminates in a study of both Huckleberry Finn and “A Double-Barreled Detective Story,” Walser focuses on a single element of social cognition:
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Pub Date : 2023-11-01DOI: 10.5325/marktwaij.21.1.0166
Emily E. VanDette
Aside from its inclusion in anthologies, Mark Twain’s last published novella has been out of print since 1907. Charles C. Bradshaw rectifies that with a long overdue, and superbly executed, critical edition of A Horse’s Tale. First published in 1906, in response to a personal request Twain received from New York actress and animal rights activist Minnie Maddern Fiske for a story condemning Spanish bullfighting, A Horse’s Tale would spend the next century in obscurity because of its unabashed sentimentality. The University of Nebraska Press’s Bison Books edition marks the official end to that era of neglect. The volume includes an illuminating introduction by Bradshaw that places the novella in its historical and biographical contexts; the novella in its entirety, along with explanatory notes and original illustrations; an afterword by Shelley Fisher Fishkin highlighting the significance of the book in the scope of Twain’s animal writing and advocacy; and an array of relevant historical materials provided in the appendix. The result is a valuable resource for scholars, teachers, and students who wish to expand their understanding of Twain’s late-career animal advocacy writing and his complex treatment of frontier tropes and culture.Given the book’s inclusion in The Papers of William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody Series, a substantial portion of Bradshaw’s introduction focuses on the connections between “Buffalo Bill” Cody and Twain as a major context for the novella. The Cody-Twain context is nuanced, and Bradshaw deftly outlines the cultural dynamics and tensions between the two iconic American personalities. While at first applauding the “Buffalo Bill” exhibition as a distinctly American cultural project when he saw it performed in Elmira in 1884, Twain would later come to recognize (and reject) the imperialistic spectacle of the frontier presented in the show. Bradshaw notes that “Twain’s last angry exit from Madison Square Garden where Buffalo Bill’s Wild West was being performed in 1901 … projects the beginnings of both Cody’s and Twain’s frontierism toward divergent trajectories and highlights how Twain saw his nationalistic ambitions distorted into imperialistic spectacles and the worst in human nature, even as Cody patriotically embraced them in his show” (xxxvi). As Bradshaw explains, despite his abhorrence of the nationalistic spectacle generated by the “Wild West” show, Twain appreciated the cultural appeal of Buffalo Bill, and especially of his horse, Soldier Boy, which he put to the service of the book’s animal welfare aspirations.Other themes and contexts addressed in Bradshaw’s introduction include Twain’s connection to the West, childhood, and gender roles in his writing and personal life, and his famous anti-imperialism. Indeed, a frontier adventure tale with an animal-loving little girl as the protagonist ties together key facets of Twain’s legacy. “Twain’s employment of these sensationalist western motifs [popularized by Cody] brings h
除了被收录进选集之外，马克·吐温最后一部出版的中篇小说自1907年以来已经绝版。查尔斯·c·布拉德肖(Charles C. Bradshaw)用姗姗来迟、执行出色的批评版《马的故事》纠正了这一点。1906年，马克·吐温应纽约女演员兼动物权利活动家米妮·马登·菲斯克的个人要求，写了一篇谴责西班牙斗牛的故事，《马的故事》首次出版，由于其毫不掩饰的感受力，该书在接下来的一个世纪里默默无闻。内布拉斯加大学出版社的野牛图书版标志着那个被忽视的时代的正式结束。本卷包括布拉德肖的启发性介绍，将中篇小说置于其历史和传记背景中;完整的中篇小说，连同解释性注释和原始插图;雪莉·费雪·菲什金的后记强调了这本书在吐温的动物写作和倡导范围内的重要性;并在附录中提供了一系列相关史料。该书为学者、教师和学生提供了宝贵的资源，他们希望扩大对吐温晚年动物倡导写作的理解，以及他对前沿比喻和文化的复杂处理。鉴于这本书被收录在威廉·f·“野牛比尔”科迪系列的论文中，布拉德肖的引言中有很大一部分集中在“野牛比尔”科迪和吐温之间的联系上，作为中篇小说的主要背景。科迪-吐温的故事背景很微妙，布拉德肖巧妙地勾勒出这两位美国标志性人物之间的文化动态和紧张关系。1884年，当马克·吐温在埃尔米拉看到“野牛比尔”展览时，他起初称赞它是一个明显的美国文化项目，但后来他逐渐认识到(并拒绝)展览中呈现的边疆帝国主义景象。布拉德肖指出，“马克·吐温最后一次愤怒地离开麦迪逊广场花园，1901年，布法罗·比尔的《狂野西部》在麦迪逊广场花园上演……这表明科迪和马克·吐温的边疆主义开始走向不同的轨迹，并突出了马克·吐温如何将自己的民族主义野心扭曲成帝国主义的景象，以及人性中最糟糕的一面，尽管科迪在他的表演中爱国地拥抱了它们”(xxxvi)。尽管马克·吐温厌恶“狂野西部”表演带来的民族主义景象，但他欣赏野牛比尔的文化吸引力，尤其是他的马“士兵男孩”，他把它用于书中动物福利的愿望。布拉德肖介绍的其他主题和背景包括吐温与西方的联系、童年、写作和个人生活中的性别角色，以及他著名的反帝国主义。的确，一个以热爱动物的小女孩为主角的边疆冒险故事，将吐温的遗产的关键方面联系在一起。“吐温对这些耸人听闻的西方主题的运用(由科迪推广)使他在生命的最后，回到了他的文学根源，不仅依靠汤姆索亚如此天真地陶醉的难以置信的故事，而且还依靠他自己对儿童的描绘，这些儿童是他早期文学名声的基础”(xxviii)。而吐温自己心爱的女儿苏西克莱门斯，在24岁时不幸去世，显然是《马的故事》中的凯西·艾莉森的原型，布拉德肖也承认，吐温晚年在他的“天使鱼”俱乐部里与年轻女孩的通信更棘手。这部中篇小说甚至还从作者写给他自创的“俱乐部”里的女孩们的信中逐字摘录了几段。“虽然他关于凯茜的写作反映了一种进步的强度和魅力，使世纪之交的女性理想活跃起来，为年轻女孩创造了新的文学空间，但吐温不幸地将童年的理想与这些老年的关注混合在一起，给他生命的最后几年带来了一种忧郁的结局”(xxxv)。布拉德肖挖掘的另一种明显的张力，对于理解这部中篇小说在作者晚期事业和生活背景下的意义至关重要。是吐温在边疆叙事的民族主义修辞和他对反帝国主义的热情以及对爱国主义表现的日益不信任之间的协调。布拉德肖在《马的故事》中分析了边疆的情境条件和局限性:“权力、帝国和军国主义的表现是一种陈腐的练习，适合孩子们的娱乐，但在错误的人手中，它支撑着国家，杀害无辜，并使人类对他人的痛苦麻木”(xliii-xliv)。这部中篇小说的文本遵循1907年哈珀兄弟出版社的印刷，包括卢修斯·沃尔科特·希区柯克的原始插图。布拉德肖的解释性注释详细而易懂，为许多学者读者可能难以捉摸的历史参考资料提供了线索。 对于那些不熟悉《马的故事》的人(可能有很多读者，因为到目前为止它相对默默无闻)，这个故事的情感驱动的前提和悲剧的结局，充满深情的人物，以及明确的道德，似乎使这个故事与吐温的其他经典作品区别开来。但是雪莱·费雪·菲什金的后记提醒我们，马克·吐温毫不犹豫地运用感伤的传统“反对虐待动物”，而《马的故事》“重申了马克·吐温在他的整个职业生涯中用来解决这个问题的一些策略”(87)。在吐温写动物的许多例子中，没有一个比他1904年写的反活体解剖的故事《狗的故事》(A Dog’s Tale)更能说明这个问题了。这本书和威廉·托马斯·斯梅德利(William Thomas Smedley)的原始插图一起，被完整地收录在新版的附录中。《马的故事》从士兵男孩的角度讲述的章节会让读者想起狗妈妈艾琳·马沃尼恩(Aileen Mavourneen)对自己在人类手中失去和背叛的心碎经历的叙述。在批判版的基础上，还增加了一系列相关背景下的历史材料附录:吐温参与动物福利事业;克莱门斯家的孩子和吐温关于童年的作品;美国在国外边疆的演出;以及对帝国主义的相关回应，包括吐温1901年的文章《致坐在黑暗中的人》。附录中一个特别的亮点是马克·吐温写给《哈珀》杂志编辑弗雷德里克·A·杜内卡的信，他在信中透露，他深爱的女儿苏西是他无意中为凯西提供灵感的来源，并分享了她小时候的一张肖像，让插画家“用摄影般的精确再现出无与伦比的表情和一切”。的确，这本内容全面的版本为学生、学者和书迷们提供了必要的工具来欣赏这个鲜为人知的故事，而这个故事无疑是贴近年迈的吐温的内心的。
{"title":"Mark Twain, A Horse’s Tale","authors":"Emily E. VanDette","doi":"10.5325/marktwaij.21.1.0166","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/marktwaij.21.1.0166","url":null,"abstract":"Aside from its inclusion in anthologies, Mark Twain’s last published novella has been out of print since 1907. Charles C. Bradshaw rectifies that with a long overdue, and superbly executed, critical edition of A Horse’s Tale. First published in 1906, in response to a personal request Twain received from New York actress and animal rights activist Minnie Maddern Fiske for a story condemning Spanish bullfighting, A Horse’s Tale would spend the next century in obscurity because of its unabashed sentimentality. The University of Nebraska Press’s Bison Books edition marks the official end to that era of neglect. The volume includes an illuminating introduction by Bradshaw that places the novella in its historical and biographical contexts; the novella in its entirety, along with explanatory notes and original illustrations; an afterword by Shelley Fisher Fishkin highlighting the significance of the book in the scope of Twain’s animal writing and advocacy; and an array of relevant historical materials provided in the appendix. The result is a valuable resource for scholars, teachers, and students who wish to expand their understanding of Twain’s late-career animal advocacy writing and his complex treatment of frontier tropes and culture.Given the book’s inclusion in The Papers of William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody Series, a substantial portion of Bradshaw’s introduction focuses on the connections between “Buffalo Bill” Cody and Twain as a major context for the novella. The Cody-Twain context is nuanced, and Bradshaw deftly outlines the cultural dynamics and tensions between the two iconic American personalities. While at first applauding the “Buffalo Bill” exhibition as a distinctly American cultural project when he saw it performed in Elmira in 1884, Twain would later come to recognize (and reject) the imperialistic spectacle of the frontier presented in the show. Bradshaw notes that “Twain’s last angry exit from Madison Square Garden where Buffalo Bill’s Wild West was being performed in 1901 … projects the beginnings of both Cody’s and Twain’s frontierism toward divergent trajectories and highlights how Twain saw his nationalistic ambitions distorted into imperialistic spectacles and the worst in human nature, even as Cody patriotically embraced them in his show” (xxxvi). As Bradshaw explains, despite his abhorrence of the nationalistic spectacle generated by the “Wild West” show, Twain appreciated the cultural appeal of Buffalo Bill, and especially of his horse, Soldier Boy, which he put to the service of the book’s animal welfare aspirations.Other themes and contexts addressed in Bradshaw’s introduction include Twain’s connection to the West, childhood, and gender roles in his writing and personal life, and his famous anti-imperialism. Indeed, a frontier adventure tale with an animal-loving little girl as the protagonist ties together key facets of Twain’s legacy. “Twain’s employment of these sensationalist western motifs [popularized by Cody] brings h","PeriodicalId":41060,"journal":{"name":"Mark Twain Annual","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135411070","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-11-01DOI: 10.5325/marktwaij.21.1.0095
Matt Seybold
Abstract During the Cultural Cold War, and specifically during the Armed Thaw of the late 1950s and early 1960s, Mark Twain became an object of propaganda between the United States and USSR. The U.S. state–private network of intelligence agencies, corporations, media conglomerates, lobbies, and other institutions set about a process of indoctrination that converted Twain into an iconography serving national interests. While the Twain Doctrine has long since ceased to dominate Twain Studies scholarship, it still operates upon the general public. This essay surveys its precepts and gives several examples of its implementation.
{"title":"The Twain Doctrine","authors":"Matt Seybold","doi":"10.5325/marktwaij.21.1.0095","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/marktwaij.21.1.0095","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract During the Cultural Cold War, and specifically during the Armed Thaw of the late 1950s and early 1960s, Mark Twain became an object of propaganda between the United States and USSR. The U.S. state–private network of intelligence agencies, corporations, media conglomerates, lobbies, and other institutions set about a process of indoctrination that converted Twain into an iconography serving national interests. While the Twain Doctrine has long since ceased to dominate Twain Studies scholarship, it still operates upon the general public. This essay surveys its precepts and gives several examples of its implementation.","PeriodicalId":41060,"journal":{"name":"Mark Twain Annual","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135411059","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-11-01DOI: 10.5325/marktwaij.21.1.0080
Megan McNamara
Abstract As the writer known as Mark Twain neared the end of his life and career, the changing circumstances of the nation caused his criticism to sharpen and move from somewhat covert to brutally overt. The ways in which American nationalism and false piety were becoming ever more entwined seemed to have led to an increased infusion of anger within his satire. In the last decade of his life, his satire of American exceptionalism grew sharper with the “The War Prayer” and “To the Person Sitting in Darkness.” The latter, originally an essay published in the North American Review in February 1901 satirizing imperialism, religion, and the myth of American innocence, was published just a month after the writer had been appointed the vice-president of the Anti-Imperialist League of New York. His disappointment, to put it mildly, at the American involvement in the Philippines and China has been well documented, but in these pieces Mark Twain attacks the Christian missionary zeal that is used as a cover for capitalism and imperialism abroad. Through his scathing response to Reverend William Scott Ament, the article instantiates his growth, with some of his most scathing and direct criticism of the missionary project and its connections with imperialist capitalism. With his latest works, Mark Twain suggests that if only Americans were able to unlearn their inherited mythologies, they might be able to avoid the most atrocious outcroppings of patriotism and Christianity.
随着著名作家马克·吐温的生命和事业接近尾声，国家环境的变化使他的批评变得尖锐，从某种程度上的隐蔽转向了残酷的公开。美国的民族主义和虚伪的虔诚越来越紧密地交织在一起，这似乎导致了他的讽刺作品中越来越多的愤怒。在他生命的最后十年里，他对美国例外论的讽刺随着《战争祈祷》和《致坐在黑暗中的人》变得更加尖锐。后者最初是1901年2月发表在《北美评论》上的一篇讽刺帝国主义、宗教和美国纯真神话的文章，在作者被任命为纽约反帝国主义联盟副主席一个月后发表。委婉地说，他对美国介入菲律宾和中国事务的失望已经有了充分的记录，但在这些作品中，马克·吐温攻击了基督教传教士的热情，这种热情被用作海外资本主义和帝国主义的幌子。通过他对牧师威廉·斯科特·阿门特(William Scott Ament)的严厉回应，这篇文章体现了他的成长历程，他对传教项目及其与帝国主义资本主义的联系进行了一些最严厉、最直接的批评。马克·吐温在他的最新作品中暗示，只要美国人能够忘掉他们继承的神话，他们也许就能避免爱国主义和基督教最残暴的流露。
{"title":"“Only Dead Men Can Tell the Truth in This World”: The Growth of Mark Twain’s Anger","authors":"Megan McNamara","doi":"10.5325/marktwaij.21.1.0080","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/marktwaij.21.1.0080","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract As the writer known as Mark Twain neared the end of his life and career, the changing circumstances of the nation caused his criticism to sharpen and move from somewhat covert to brutally overt. The ways in which American nationalism and false piety were becoming ever more entwined seemed to have led to an increased infusion of anger within his satire. In the last decade of his life, his satire of American exceptionalism grew sharper with the “The War Prayer” and “To the Person Sitting in Darkness.” The latter, originally an essay published in the North American Review in February 1901 satirizing imperialism, religion, and the myth of American innocence, was published just a month after the writer had been appointed the vice-president of the Anti-Imperialist League of New York. His disappointment, to put it mildly, at the American involvement in the Philippines and China has been well documented, but in these pieces Mark Twain attacks the Christian missionary zeal that is used as a cover for capitalism and imperialism abroad. Through his scathing response to Reverend William Scott Ament, the article instantiates his growth, with some of his most scathing and direct criticism of the missionary project and its connections with imperialist capitalism. With his latest works, Mark Twain suggests that if only Americans were able to unlearn their inherited mythologies, they might be able to avoid the most atrocious outcroppings of patriotism and Christianity.","PeriodicalId":41060,"journal":{"name":"Mark Twain Annual","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135411057","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-28DOI: 10.5325/marktwaij.20.1.0130
Myrial Adel Holbrook
Abstract:Mark Twain and Sherman Alexie are at once an unlikely and a likely duo. A vast gulf of time, culture, and heritage separates them. What likens them is their shared celebrity status and iconic, irreverent humor. This paper undertakes a comparison between Twain and Alexie, not to diminish the important and idiosyncratic role of Native American humor, but rather to bring it into conversation with white humor, perhaps approaching a multiplex American humor. A comparison of two of their early works, Roughing It for Twain and The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven for Alexie, to illuminate the ways in which both authors eschew the physical terrain of the West, instead monumentalizing a cacophonous, comical verbal landscape. Both authors, as public figures, also raise questions of what it means to monumentalize authors, and this paper gestures toward that dual pitfall and potential.
{"title":"The Terra Comica between Mark Twain and Sherman Alexie","authors":"Myrial Adel Holbrook","doi":"10.5325/marktwaij.20.1.0130","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/marktwaij.20.1.0130","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Mark Twain and Sherman Alexie are at once an unlikely and a likely duo. A vast gulf of time, culture, and heritage separates them. What likens them is their shared celebrity status and iconic, irreverent humor. This paper undertakes a comparison between Twain and Alexie, not to diminish the important and idiosyncratic role of Native American humor, but rather to bring it into conversation with white humor, perhaps approaching a multiplex American humor. A comparison of two of their early works, Roughing It for Twain and The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven for Alexie, to illuminate the ways in which both authors eschew the physical terrain of the West, instead monumentalizing a cacophonous, comical verbal landscape. Both authors, as public figures, also raise questions of what it means to monumentalize authors, and this paper gestures toward that dual pitfall and potential.","PeriodicalId":41060,"journal":{"name":"Mark Twain Annual","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2022-09-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42637440","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-28DOI: 10.5325/marktwaij.20.1.0053
T. Thompson
Abstract:The December 1872 death of Hawaiian monarch Kamehameha V spurred renewed interest among U.S. citizens and politicians alike in the annexation of the Hawaiian Islands. To satisfy the public’s increased curiosity about Hawai‘i, in January 1873 the New York Tribune sought testimony in the form of two letters from a well-known expert on the islands: Mark Twain, who had gained nationwide fame based his popular comic lecture “Our Fellow Savages of the Sandwich Islands,” which he delivered across the United States and abroad between 1866 and 1873. Between January and March of 1873 at least seventy newspapers and magazines reprinted excerpts of Mark Twain’s Tribune letters. This article considers how these reprinted excerpts decontextualize or mischaracterize Mark Twain’s insights as well as what they reveal about the American reading public’s views of Mark Twain as both a comedian and as a serious expert on Hawai‘i in the early 1870s.
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Pub Date : 2022-09-28DOI: 10.5325/marktwaij.20.1.0174
A. Hebard
Abstract:This article argues that Mark Twain’s West was a bureaucratically managed space and that his depictions of western institutions reveal forms of political corruption that are not venal. Unlike the corruption that the Supreme Court has recently limited to quid pro quo exchanges of money for political favors by individuals, the corruption that Twain reveals through the lens of his western experiences is endemic to institutions and can often involve well-meaning individuals who are not acting in criminal ways.
{"title":"Political Corruption and Mark Twain’s West","authors":"A. Hebard","doi":"10.5325/marktwaij.20.1.0174","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/marktwaij.20.1.0174","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article argues that Mark Twain’s West was a bureaucratically managed space and that his depictions of western institutions reveal forms of political corruption that are not venal. Unlike the corruption that the Supreme Court has recently limited to quid pro quo exchanges of money for political favors by individuals, the corruption that Twain reveals through the lens of his western experiences is endemic to institutions and can often involve well-meaning individuals who are not acting in criminal ways.","PeriodicalId":41060,"journal":{"name":"Mark Twain Annual","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2022-09-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45849017","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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