Teaching Modern British and American Satire and Humorists vs. Religion: Critical Voices from Mark Twain to Neil DeGrasse Tyson and Echoes of Emerson: Rethinking Realism in Twain, James, Wharton, and Cather

Abstract

Teaching Modern British and American Satire. Edited by Evan R. Davis and Nicholas D. Nace. New York: Modern Language Association, 2019. 374 pp. $34.00, paper.The essays assembled by Davis and Nace cover a range from the late eighteenth century of Pope and Swift to today's era of Stephen Colbert and South Park. While the overall collection may interest humor scholars, Joe B. Fulton's “Teaching Burlesque with Twain” essay offers content designed for those of us presenting Twain in the classroom. Fulton begins by focusing on “A Double-Barreled Detective Story” and early sketches like “Petrified Man,” before delving into Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. Covering both the texts and the popular works burlesqued by Twain, Fulton's essay notes several pairings and/or potentially fruitful topics for class discussion. Humorists vs. Religion: Critical Voices from Mark Twain to Neil DeGrasse Tyson. By Iain Ellis. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2018. 261 pp. $39.95, paper.Admirably, Ellis addresses the complex, contradictory nature of Twain's religiosity rather than taking the author's cynicism as a given. Instead, he sees “a series of mixed messages” where “efforts to find God are tempered with a voice of reason that is determined to reject Him” (20). While this first chapter may not offer Twain scholars new findings, the book's strength is in the way it charts an intellectual progression from Twain, past Kurt Vonnegut and Lenny Bruce, to Ricky Gervais, the French newspaper Charlie Hebdo, and the Russian band Pussy Riot. Humor scholars and religious studies instructors may find this useful, along with anyone interested in Twain's continuing role as a touchstone figure in sacred versus secular debates. Echoes of Emerson: Rethinking Realism in Twain, James, Wharton, and Cather. Diana Hope Polley. Tuscaloosa: U of Alabama P, 2017. 176 pp. $54.95, cloth.Polley's book considers moments when postbellum realist novels “embrace the ideas, and often idealisms, of [a] residual romantic tradition” embodied in the United States by Ralph Waldo Emerson (5). Her first chapter covers moments in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn that privilege romanticism and independence. From this view, “Huck becomes a fictional embodiment of Emersonian possibility,” who struggles for self-reliance in a world that is very much stuck in its traditions (27). This approach yields uncommon and nuanced considerations of not only Huck Finn, but also Twain's infamous address at John Greenleaf Whittier's seventieth birthday, where Emerson was present to hear jokes at his expense. The result is a rewarding piece of scholarship.