Pub Date : 2019-12-31DOI: 10.1525/9780520945494-005
{"title":"Part II. Writer in the East","authors":"","doi":"10.1525/9780520945494-005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/9780520945494-005","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41060,"journal":{"name":"Mark Twain Annual","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2019-12-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82459035","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 : 2019-10-24DOI: 10.5325/marktwaij.17.1.0072
Katherine E. Bishop
Abstract:Mark Twain begins his 1880 travelogue, A Tramp Abroad, with the ostensible goal of studying art. Early on, he describes inserting his own paintings into a gallery’s “wilderness of oil pictures,” calling attention to the text’s complicated relationship with nature and art. Quite often, Twain approaches art as a reflection of human hubris, his own included: his consideration of the overblown reputations of Old Masters who owe time more than skill for their veneration is a case in point. But it is notable that throughout A Tramp Abroad, Twain perseverates on the imagistic and physical imposition of the human over the landscape, questioning what goes into, and comes out of, anthropocentric visions of the environment. Rather than perpetuating the split between human and nature, so prominent in nineteenth-century picturesque and sublime art, he reorients himself and his reader so that we are off to the side, no longer chasing after dominance but coexisting, even minimized. In A Tramp Abroad, Twain disrupts the petrification of the natural world and the overwriting of the human onto the nonhuman from aesthetic, touristic, and nationalist vantage points by confronting the way the world is often translated into human terms. While Twain’s characteristic humor ripples across the surface of A Tramp Abroad, the text uses his course of study to pose serious questions, ones connecting the author’s aesthetic reflections with his perambulations. He asks what is wilderness? how do we define (or refine) it? and how do our renderings of it affect our relationship to it?
{"title":"“A Wilderness of Oil Pictures”: Reframing Nature in A Tramp Abroad","authors":"Katherine E. Bishop","doi":"10.5325/marktwaij.17.1.0072","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/marktwaij.17.1.0072","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Mark Twain begins his 1880 travelogue, A Tramp Abroad, with the ostensible goal of studying art. Early on, he describes inserting his own paintings into a gallery’s “wilderness of oil pictures,” calling attention to the text’s complicated relationship with nature and art. Quite often, Twain approaches art as a reflection of human hubris, his own included: his consideration of the overblown reputations of Old Masters who owe time more than skill for their veneration is a case in point. But it is notable that throughout A Tramp Abroad, Twain perseverates on the imagistic and physical imposition of the human over the landscape, questioning what goes into, and comes out of, anthropocentric visions of the environment. Rather than perpetuating the split between human and nature, so prominent in nineteenth-century picturesque and sublime art, he reorients himself and his reader so that we are off to the side, no longer chasing after dominance but coexisting, even minimized. In A Tramp Abroad, Twain disrupts the petrification of the natural world and the overwriting of the human onto the nonhuman from aesthetic, touristic, and nationalist vantage points by confronting the way the world is often translated into human terms. While Twain’s characteristic humor ripples across the surface of A Tramp Abroad, the text uses his course of study to pose serious questions, ones connecting the author’s aesthetic reflections with his perambulations. He asks what is wilderness? how do we define (or refine) it? and how do our renderings of it affect our relationship to it?","PeriodicalId":41060,"journal":{"name":"Mark Twain Annual","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2019-10-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41292497","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 : 2019-10-24DOI: 10.5325/marktwaij.17.1.0088
Delphine Louis-Dimitrov
Abstract:In its full range, the presence of nature in Mark Twain’s Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc has remained largely unexplored. As a site of fictionalization in a narrative that otherwise strongly relies on historiographical material, the treatment of nature nonetheless proves central to the characterization of the heroine, to the construction of a timeless aesthetic sphere in which her childhood is set, and to the understanding of her relationship with history. It also bears the stamp of Mark Twain’s imagination and reveals the oft-denied proximity of his 1895–96 historical romance with his other writings. Focusing on the articulation of nature with spirituality and history, this article argues that the narrative reinterprets the myth of the divinely inspired shepherdess and thereby defines an original form of pastoralism that not only fuses existing traditions, but also reaches beyond the tension of nature and history that the genre commonly involves. Through the treatment of Joan’s mystic union with nature, the text defines a form of pastoralism in which the retreat into the natural world turns out to be the principle of a renewed commitment to history.
{"title":"Nature in Mark Twain’s Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc: Pastoralism Revisited","authors":"Delphine Louis-Dimitrov","doi":"10.5325/marktwaij.17.1.0088","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/marktwaij.17.1.0088","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:In its full range, the presence of nature in Mark Twain’s Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc has remained largely unexplored. As a site of fictionalization in a narrative that otherwise strongly relies on historiographical material, the treatment of nature nonetheless proves central to the characterization of the heroine, to the construction of a timeless aesthetic sphere in which her childhood is set, and to the understanding of her relationship with history. It also bears the stamp of Mark Twain’s imagination and reveals the oft-denied proximity of his 1895–96 historical romance with his other writings. Focusing on the articulation of nature with spirituality and history, this article argues that the narrative reinterprets the myth of the divinely inspired shepherdess and thereby defines an original form of pastoralism that not only fuses existing traditions, but also reaches beyond the tension of nature and history that the genre commonly involves. Through the treatment of Joan’s mystic union with nature, the text defines a form of pastoralism in which the retreat into the natural world turns out to be the principle of a renewed commitment to history.","PeriodicalId":41060,"journal":{"name":"Mark Twain Annual","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2019-10-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48518692","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 : 2019-10-24DOI: 10.5325/marktwaij.17.1.0001
Michael P. Branch
Abstract:In this personal essay, environmental humor writer Michael P. Branch considers the influential ways in which Mark Twain represented the natural environment of the Great Basin Desert in his 1872 book Roughing It. While Twain was among the first writers to recognize the captivating beauty of the high desert, he also promoted a view of the desert as barren wasteland—a complex approach that produced a dual vision of the land that remains dominant today. However, while Twain helped to shape impressions of the Nevada landscape, the Nevada desert also helped to shape the writer Twain would become.
{"title":"Made in Nevada: Mark Twain and the Literary Legacy of Place","authors":"Michael P. Branch","doi":"10.5325/marktwaij.17.1.0001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/marktwaij.17.1.0001","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:In this personal essay, environmental humor writer Michael P. Branch considers the influential ways in which Mark Twain represented the natural environment of the Great Basin Desert in his 1872 book Roughing It. While Twain was among the first writers to recognize the captivating beauty of the high desert, he also promoted a view of the desert as barren wasteland—a complex approach that produced a dual vision of the land that remains dominant today. However, while Twain helped to shape impressions of the Nevada landscape, the Nevada desert also helped to shape the writer Twain would become.","PeriodicalId":41060,"journal":{"name":"Mark Twain Annual","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2019-10-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47270617","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 : 2019-10-24DOI: 10.5325/marktwaij.17.1.0129
J. Bird
Abstract:In 1978, William Rueckert coined the term “ecocriticism,” defining it as “the application of ecology and ecological concepts to the study of literature.” He proposed three postulates about literature, which are all metaphors. Taking a cue from Rueckert, this article examines the metaphorical nature of Mark Twain’s nature writing, looking at the way his works function as stored energy, as energy pathways, and as both fossil fuel and renewable resources, using passages from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, “Old Times on the Mississippi,” and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Unlike Rueckert’s rather sunny postulates, this article sees a darker side in Twain’s works, a recognition that is revealed in his conflicted metaphors of nature. Just as Samuel Clemens and Mark Twain have long been considered divided, we as humans are divided: we are both a part of and apart from nature, a bifurcation and conflict that is contained in Twain’s metaphorical language.
{"title":"Mark Twain and the Conflicted Metaphor of Nature","authors":"J. Bird","doi":"10.5325/marktwaij.17.1.0129","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/marktwaij.17.1.0129","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:In 1978, William Rueckert coined the term “ecocriticism,” defining it as “the application of ecology and ecological concepts to the study of literature.” He proposed three postulates about literature, which are all metaphors. Taking a cue from Rueckert, this article examines the metaphorical nature of Mark Twain’s nature writing, looking at the way his works function as stored energy, as energy pathways, and as both fossil fuel and renewable resources, using passages from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, “Old Times on the Mississippi,” and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Unlike Rueckert’s rather sunny postulates, this article sees a darker side in Twain’s works, a recognition that is revealed in his conflicted metaphors of nature. Just as Samuel Clemens and Mark Twain have long been considered divided, we as humans are divided: we are both a part of and apart from nature, a bifurcation and conflict that is contained in Twain’s metaphorical language.","PeriodicalId":41060,"journal":{"name":"Mark Twain Annual","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2019-10-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44573991","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 : 2019-10-24DOI: 10.5325/marktwaij.17.1.0049
Ryan Heryford
Abstract:This article will trace Mark Twain’s early notes and letters to the Sacramento Union and Alta California during his four-month stay on the Hawaiian Island in 1866 and his subsequent trip down the Rio San Juan in Nicaragua later that year, considering his poetic meditations on a diversity of flora and fauna alongside his occasionally direct and sometimes elusive commentaries on territorial annexation, missionization, and settler occupation in the Pacific and beyond. Reading across a colonial archive of nineteenth-century environmental surveys of the Pacific atolls and the Central American isthmus, this article will highlight Twain’s alignment toward and departure from a tradition of writing about non-European ecologies as bound within the exotic picturesque. Twain’s ambivalent, non-Western ecologies mark a politics that extends well beyond his familiar satires and pointed expositions, offering pathways for reimagining the place of non-human environments throughout his subsequent literary canon.
{"title":"“The Breath of Flowers That Perished”: Imperial Ecologies in Mark Twain’s Early Letters","authors":"Ryan Heryford","doi":"10.5325/marktwaij.17.1.0049","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/marktwaij.17.1.0049","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article will trace Mark Twain’s early notes and letters to the Sacramento Union and Alta California during his four-month stay on the Hawaiian Island in 1866 and his subsequent trip down the Rio San Juan in Nicaragua later that year, considering his poetic meditations on a diversity of flora and fauna alongside his occasionally direct and sometimes elusive commentaries on territorial annexation, missionization, and settler occupation in the Pacific and beyond. Reading across a colonial archive of nineteenth-century environmental surveys of the Pacific atolls and the Central American isthmus, this article will highlight Twain’s alignment toward and departure from a tradition of writing about non-European ecologies as bound within the exotic picturesque. Twain’s ambivalent, non-Western ecologies mark a politics that extends well beyond his familiar satires and pointed expositions, offering pathways for reimagining the place of non-human environments throughout his subsequent literary canon.","PeriodicalId":41060,"journal":{"name":"Mark Twain Annual","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2019-10-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46816085","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}
京公网安备 11010802042870号
京ICP备2023020795号-1
扫码关注我们
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：