Pub Date : 2020-11-19DOI: 10.5325/marktwaij.18.1.0133
M. Dawley
Abstract:During what may now be dubbed the "first" Gilded Age, writers like Mark Twain began to satirize the national ideal of innocence—the concept that America was somehow both ahistorical and exceptional. This article proposes a new reading of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), viewed through the lens of Twain's satire of the Bible. In Letters from the Earth (1962) and The Diaries of Adam and Eve (1997), Twain emphasizes the pure innocence of the supposed first man and woman and has Satan provide ironic commentary on God's paternal hypocrisy toward the "damned human race." Through Huck, Adam, and Eve, Twain exhibits a parody of the exceptional nature of American innocence. By characterizing Satan as sympathetic, God as cruel and thoughtless, and humankind as the worst of the Creator's inventions, Twain draws attention to the distance between what is known to be human and what is thought to be just.
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Pub Date : 2020-11-19DOI: 10.5325/marktwaij.18.1.0090
Bruce F Michelson
Abstract:Although Mark Twain wanted his autobiographical writings and dictations to become a published book and a culminating text in his legacy, the definitive Autobiography of Mark Twain has attracted only cautious attention as yet, because it presents interconnected texts and compels negotiation of complex personal and historical circumstance. These texts include (1) autobiographical discourses beginning in 1904, along with Mark Twain's earlier forays into life-writing; (2) editorial annotations and notes for all these discourses; (3) a detailed history of these efforts; and (4) an account of how and why these documents have been recovered, established, and sequenced. Conjoined here, these texts constitute an important experiment in American life-writing, as well as a challenge to scholarly engagement with this kind of narrative and its implications.
{"title":"Reckoning with the Autobiography","authors":"Bruce F Michelson","doi":"10.5325/marktwaij.18.1.0090","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/marktwaij.18.1.0090","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Although Mark Twain wanted his autobiographical writings and dictations to become a published book and a culminating text in his legacy, the definitive Autobiography of Mark Twain has attracted only cautious attention as yet, because it presents interconnected texts and compels negotiation of complex personal and historical circumstance. These texts include (1) autobiographical discourses beginning in 1904, along with Mark Twain's earlier forays into life-writing; (2) editorial annotations and notes for all these discourses; (3) a detailed history of these efforts; and (4) an account of how and why these documents have been recovered, established, and sequenced. Conjoined here, these texts constitute an important experiment in American life-writing, as well as a challenge to scholarly engagement with this kind of narrative and its implications.","PeriodicalId":41060,"journal":{"name":"Mark Twain Annual","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2020-11-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45269830","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}
The 1890s were a difficult decade for the Clemens as they dealt with the death of their daughter Susy at age twenty-four and financial struggles that brought them nearly to bankruptcy and led Twain to undertake a world lecturing tour to pay off their debts. More positively, by the mid-1890s, Twain was a global celebrity whose opinions were solicited on many matters and who enjoyed friendships with numerous political, business, and literary luminaries. In earlier works, Twain had spoofed religious tracts, pompous preachers and grandstanders, and pretentious moralizing, but during the 1890s, his criticism of Christianity, God, and the Bible became harsher. In 1896, however, Twain published his most enigmatic book—Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc—a glowing portrait of the fifteenth-century French warrior-saint who played a pivotal role in liberating France from long-standing British domination but was captured and burned at the stake for her alleged heresy.
{"title":"The 1890s","authors":"G. Smith","doi":"10.2307/j.ctt21kk2vj.8","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt21kk2vj.8","url":null,"abstract":"The 1890s were a difficult decade for the Clemens as they dealt with the death of their daughter Susy at age twenty-four and financial struggles that brought them nearly to bankruptcy and led Twain to undertake a world lecturing tour to pay off their debts. More positively, by the mid-1890s, Twain was a global celebrity whose opinions were solicited on many matters and who enjoyed friendships with numerous political, business, and literary luminaries. In earlier works, Twain had spoofed religious tracts, pompous preachers and grandstanders, and pretentious moralizing, but during the 1890s, his criticism of Christianity, God, and the Bible became harsher. In 1896, however, Twain published his most enigmatic book—Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc—a glowing portrait of the fifteenth-century French warrior-saint who played a pivotal role in liberating France from long-standing British domination but was captured and burned at the stake for her alleged heresy.","PeriodicalId":41060,"journal":{"name":"Mark Twain Annual","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2020-08-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76773782","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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