Humor - History & Criticism, 19th Century American Literature - Literary Criticism
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Overview
This book provides an overview of Mark Twain's work and a close critical analysis of his major texts, and includes chapters on Huckleberry Finn, A Connecticut Yankee and Puddn'head Wilson. Using recent cultural and literary theory to re-examine Twain's travel-writing and fictions, and written in a refreshingly jargon-free and accessible manner, Peter Messent begins by discussing one of Twain's oddest but most comic short stories, 'The Stolen White Elephant'. This tale of an elephant on the loose, causing havoc wherever it goes, and hunted by the logical but myopic Detective Blunt, serves as a revealing point of entry to Twain's narratives as a whole, with their stress on shifting perspective, incongruity and constant undecideability.Editorials
Booknews
Provides an overview of Mark Twain's work and a close critical analysis of his major texts, including "Huckleberry Finn, A Connecticut Yankee" and "Puddn'head Wilson". Re-examining Twain's travel-writing and fictions in light of recent cultural and literal theory, the author focuses on Twain's attitudes toward Europe and the American West, and discusses his representations of boyhood, race relations, capitalist expansion, and technology. Anxieties about changes in the social and industrial order in post Civil-War America and the status of the individual within it are also examined. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.Book Details
Published
April 1, 1997
Publisher
St. Martin's Press
Pages
248
Format
Hardcover
ISBN
9780312164799