Literary Criticism - General & Miscellaneous, Literary Criticism - U.S. Fiction & Prose Literature - General & Miscellaneous, 19th Century American Literature - Literary Criticism, Philosophy & Literature

Proper Mark Twain

Name: Proper Mark Twain
Author: Leland Krauth
ISBN: 9780820321066

by Leland Krauth

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Overview

Proper Mark Twain redefines the persona of the humorist to include this bounded Twain, who affirms the dominant values of Victorian America. Largely overlooked or sidestepped in critical commentaries, the proper Twain informs all of the writer's major works. He also appears in the early western writings, the personal courtship letters, and the final autobiographical dictations. The proper Twain confirms and upholds humorously what the transgressive Twain seems to subvert. Krauth finds manifestations of the conventional in Twain's cultural imperialism, literary domesticity, sentimentality, commitment to progress, and even his humor. Further, he argues persuasively that the bounded Twain speaks not only to appease his culture but to express deeply held convictions. This meticulous study aims to determine just how orthodox Twain was and to what extent he was a product of the culture he seemed to oppose. To see the proper Mark Twain, Krauth explains, is to understand how Twain saw himself and what he meant to convey to his audience. Throughout his career, Twain longed to be seen as more than a mere humorist, claiming, as his, qualities dear to the Victorian heart: seriousness, morality, and pathos. He contended that gravity and tender feeling are "absolutely essential" in a humorist. Upholding the elite culture he seemed to challenge, the proper Mark Twain even hoped to cultivate the masses. Krauth's study uncovers a seldom-seen side of America's most important humorist.

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Editorials

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Students of Mark Twain have generally preferred to see him as a rebel; here Krauth, who teaches English at the University of Colorado-Boulder, issues them a challenge. His detailed, scholarly study marshals evidence that Twain "was on the side of orthodoxy" and "the product of his culture." Each of the eight chapters describes a type of Victorian writer--the moralist, the sentimentalist, the travel writer, etc.--and places Twain in that tradition. Most of Twain's full-length books are covered, including the much-neglected A Tramp Abroad and Following the Equator. Krauth takes up Twain's love letters to Olivia Langdon and shows that they are "thoroughly literary," and reveals how Twain's courtship forced him into respectability to impress the conservative Langdon family. Krauth deftly explores Twain's literary personae as repentant sinner, gentleman, man of feeling, man of the world and man of letters. Krauth's approach allows him to account easily for passages that have stumped other critics, usefully correcting the one-sided view of Twain as purely radical. But Krauth's thorough catalogue of conventional attitudes and statements in these books does not suffice to prove his broader point, and he is forced to acknowledge a "self-loathing, socially subversive other within [Twain]." As strikingly conventional as Twain may have been in some respects, there's no denying that the great satirist found the urge to thumb his nose at society all but irrepressible. (Aug.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

The Mark Twain who emerges from these pages probably won't please readers who like to see him as an irreverent opponent of sentimentality and social convention. But by looking at Twain's career from beginning to end, Krauth (English, Univ. of Colorado, Boulder) makes a strong case that, whatever role transgressive humor played in his work, in Mark Twain Sam Clemens tried to project the persona of the Victorian gentleman. Krauth's re-examination of Twain via this lens highlights some interesting issues--Twain's concern with sentiment (or "right feelings"); the conventional, scarcely unbuttoned self-portrait presented in selections of the autobiography that appeared, late in Twain's life, in the North American Review; and the symbolism of Twain's famous white linen suit, which he sported in the last decade of his life. Although Krauth may neglect the transgressive in Twain's genius, his view of Twain sheds new light on the man and artist. Recommended for all libraries. Charles Nash, Cottey Coll., Nevada, MO Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.