Mark Twain Research Articles

Power and poetics at work: rewriting Mark Twain’s “Cannibalism in the Cars” in Japan and China

Power and poetics at work: rewriting Mark Twain’s “Cannibalism in the Cars” in Japan and China

Senses and Sensibility: Huckleberry Finn's Path to Truth and Freedom

Given that some masterpieces of English literature still conceal aspects that have not been fully explored, this analysis focuses on Mark Twain’s novel "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," which remains highly relevant in the context of current global affairs, where discussion on race and tolerance are mainstream. The article argues that the novel's protagonist, Huck, rejects the social programming of his time in favour of freedom, breaking through both social and religious barriers. This work highlights the central role of human senses as the ultimate arbiters of morality and truth in Huck's life. By examining Huck's journey, this analysis emphasizes the profound impact of his intuitive senses in navigating complex moral dilemmas and making ethical decisions. This exploration of sensory perception sheds light on Huck's commitment to moral integrity, revealing the intricate dimensions of human consciousness and ethical judgment. Additionally, the article discusses Mark Twain's effort to challenge and change the prevailing mindset on race. His subtle yet powerful attempt to recalibrate societal views challenges the conventional belief that one's social circumstances dictate their role within the collective, advocating instead for the potential of individuals to transcend societal boundaries and contribute to the pursuit of a more just world.

Mark Twain, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, and the Head Readers: Literature, Humor, and Faddish Phrenology

Mark Twain, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, and the Head Readers: Literature, Humor, and Faddish Phrenology

Satire vs Sentiment: Mark Twain, Bella Z. Spencer, and the Subscription Book Market

Abstract: This essay argues that Mark Twain has been overrepresented in scholarship on subscription bookselling, resulting in a corresponding failure to account for fiction's relationship to this popular nineteenth-century practice. Though Twain's The Gilded Age (1873) is often described as the first novel sold by subscription, I recover an earlier example: Tried and True (1866), a Civil War romance by Bella Zilfa Spencer. Reading the novel's mode of distribution as integral to its treatment of gender, race, and geography, I demonstrate the potential for literary study which gets lost somewhere between subscription bookselling's bad reputation and Mark Twain's good one.

Self-Realisation in the Awakening by Kate Chopin

Racism took a different turn in the 16th century, impacting this generation's society. Through racist beliefs and thoughts, people divided society into divisions. This study was based on racism and white people's historical oppression of black people. In this study, we examined two novels that help to analyze racism in society, and the impact of these novels on culture was also addressed. The study described slavery in the 19th century and the colonial times of Nigerian tribes. Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn offered an American perspective on racism vs. the African setting of Things Fall Apart. During the 19th century, Nigerian people faced colonization that impacted the culture and behaviour of indigenous people. In this study, different aspects of racism and the effects of racism on black people were examined. This study also showed that the British invasion forced marginalization in every element of Igbo society, ranging from traditional values to religious and gender roles; this study aims to discuss the differences in the perspective of racism by analyzing Things Fall Apart and The Adventure of Huckleberry Finn. These two pieces of literature helped to develop better concepts and aspects of racism in the social setting and highlighted the racism between white and black people.

The Difference in Perceiving Racism in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

The Difference in Perceiving Racism in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

Huck’s Voice versus Herd Mentality: The Good, the Bad, and the Evil

In Mark Twain's 1884 chef-d‘œuvre, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (HF), the voice of innocence—personified by Huck Finn—evolves as a graphic reflection of his unique social and ethical standing, portraying him as a nonconforming, Adam-like wanderer seeking refuge in nature and searching for a distinct identity. Employing literary theory, this article goes beyond exposing the moral bankruptcy and hypocrisy in an allegedly ‘civilized’ white society that purports to uphold high moral standards. Drawing on Nietzsche's doctrine of good vs. bad and good vs. evil, along with the psychological phenomenon of herd mentality, the article demonstrates how Huck's voice challenges and destabilizes orthodox linguistic conventions, societal norms, ethical constructs, and long-standing beliefs in the antebellum American South during the nineteenth century. Key findings reveal that such a unique voice can be seen as a profound critique of the antebellum South’s values, introducing a newfangled perspective on America's development of a distinctive identity and its quest to establish its own voice and literature after severing ties with Britain.

The Mercurial Mark Twain(s): Reception History and Iconic Authorship

The Mercurial Mark Twain(s): Reception History and Iconic Authorship

The Art of Humor and Irony in Mark Twain’s The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg: From the Perspective of the Construction of the Plot

The Art of Humor and Irony in Mark Twain’s The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg: From the Perspective of the Construction of the Plot

Ideology in the lexical choices of Mahir Nassim's translation of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

Ideology in the lexical choices of Mahir Nassim's translation of <i>Adventures of Huckleberry Finn</i> by Mark Twain

The Land of Heathens versus the Land of Liberty. Mark Twain’s The Innocents Abroad and Ubeydullah Efendi’s Travels

The Land of Heathens versus the Land of Liberty. Mark Twain’s The Innocents Abroad and Ubeydullah Efendi’s Travels

Unlocking the Voices of Children: The Evolution of Child Narrators in Anglophone Literature

ABSTRACT This research investigates the evolution of child narrators in adult Anglophone fiction, tracing their development from being marginalized figures in the pre-romantic era to significant voices in the subsequent Romantic, Victorian, and modern periods. It explores how evolving perceptions of childhood contributed to the inclusion and growth of child narrators over time, arguing that children’s capacity for providing unique insights and valuable perspectives was increasingly acknowledged and exploited by authors to delve deeper into the complexities of human nature. By examining key works and authors, including Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, J.D. Salinger, Emma Donoghue and Mark Haddon among others, and drawing upon interdisciplinary resources from fields such as literary criticism, childhood studies, and socio-cultural history, the paper establishes a thorough examination of the changing role and portrayal of child narrators, their cultural significance, and the ways in which they help drive social, emotional, and psychological exploration in literature.

A Possible Source of Goojoos in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn By Mark Twain

A Possible Source of Goojoos in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn By Mark Twain

Translating Laughter: A Critical Examination of Humor in three Arabic Versions of Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn

Translating Laughter: A Critical Examination of Humor in three Arabic Versions of Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn

Forms of Greeting by Supporting Characters in Mark Twain's Novel: The Prince and The Pauper

Starting a conversation by using greeting forms was considered polite when two people met. Greeting was very significant and cannot be avoided in a conversation situation. Conversation that begun with a greeting can produce good conversation construction at the next stage. One language will differ from another one in expressing its forms of greeting which, of course, were influenced by different conditions and societal backgrounds. This research was aimed at identifying, analyzing, and describing the forms and uses of greetings by the supporting characters in the novel entitled The Prince and the Pauper written by Mark Twain. The qualitative descriptive method was chosen in carrying out the research to explain in detail the results of the analysis of the research subjects’ utterances. The primary data for this research were the forms of greeting aroused from the conversation situations between the supporting characters in this novel. The data that have been obtained were then reduced, displayed and analyzed by referring to various backgrounds of the conversations that occurred, e.g.: situation, social status, position, and identity of the characters by paying attention to the concept of greeting that was proposed by Susan M. Ervin-Tripp. The results of this research showed that the forms of greeting used by the supporting characters in this novel matched or complied with the concept of greeting explained by Susan M. Ervin-Tripp.

Move Violently for Liberty in Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

The novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was written by Mark Twain, an American author and father of American literature. The novel was published in 1884. It depicts the struggles for social freedom and individualism in the face of societal expectations. The character of Huckleberry shows the natural life and fights to get against rules and discipline to need of freedom to lead the life freely according to his way. Huckleberry started his life in Widow Douglas’s house but he didn’t stay in her house. Huck goes out of house and travels from one place to other place because of his freedom. At the end of the novel Huckleberry’s father was died, so Aunt Polly wanted to adopt him but he rejected her offer and started his new life. The novel focused the teenage boy Huckleberry, and his friend Jim, how they struggle to get a freedom to lead their life in the own way. The novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn shows the significant slavery and pervasive racism of the time.

Withdrawal of A Decent Man: On the Irony in “Running for Governor”

Mark Twain’s short story “Running for Governor” is threaded with irony, which achieves a structural effect and contributed a lot to the organization of the story on the macro-level, and achieves a strong rhetorical effect with artful linguistic devices on the micro-level, therefore forming a sharp contrast between truth and falsehood. Irony in the story is effectively penetrating and powerful in its function of plot development, characterization and the demonstration of authorial attitude. This paper aims to reveal how the artistic effect of irony is achieved in this story, and show that the artistry of Mark Twain’s irony lies in creating the tension between ambivalent feelings through which there comes a direct communication between the author and reader through the ingenious organization and masterful use of language.

Words Expressing Positive Human Emotions in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Novel by Mark Twain’s

The language of emotions has infinite possibilities for conveying the subtlest shades of feelings, for evaluating what is happening through sensory experience, for influencing the addressee of the message and for self-expression. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine a human speech devoid of emotional and sensual component, regardless of what culture and language it is a native speaker. The high coefficient of the emotional component in the linguistic canvas of the cultural picture of the world of any nation is evidenced, in particular, by the data of explanatory dictionaries, the pages of which abound with emotionally colored vocabulary. The article reviews words expressing positive emotions in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Novel by Mark Twain’s.

Automatic Abstracting For Bibliographic Record Semantic Enrichment

Cultural heritage institutions store and digitize large amounts of bibliographic data within archives to make records accessible to archivists, librarians, and the general public. However, cataloging standards vary from one archive to another, which limits the sharing and use of these data. To address this issue, it is necessary to work on multilingual bibliographic records and enrich them. This would help standardize and harmonize the information, facilitating interoperability between different databases and systems. Enriching multilingual bibliographic data is essential to open up and provide broader access to these resources, thereby enhancing the dissemination of cultural heritage and enabling more efficient use by an international audience. This paper proposes a new methodology built within the framework of the interdisciplinary ROSETTA project, dedicated to enrichment of multilingual Bibliographic Records for Transnational Works. To experiment with our approach, we select 30 transnational literary works that have been translated into 15 languages, including non-dominant languages. We aggregate multilingual bibliographic records for these works from various sources. We employ an Large language model(LLM) model to enrich these records by generating summaries of works and calculating the similarity between different translations. To ensure quality and accuracy, we had Mark Twain experts at Stanford University meticulously evaluate each summary for fidelity, clarity, and coherence, and received positive feedback highlighting their precision and ability to capture the essence of the original work.

Moral and Democratic Society System in Twain’s The Man Who Corrupted Hadleyburg

This article sought to explore moral and democratic society systems within Mark Twain's short story "The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg" using a descriptive methodology. The source of data in this research was the text of the short story itself, while to support the data, the writers encompassed relevant information related to the research, including literary theory and sociological perspectives on literature. The data collection process involved in-depth reading, transcription of pertinent quotations from the story to support the research, and systematic categorization. Through genetic structuralism as the analytical framework, this study revealed the moral criticism and democratic society system as the central themes, manifesting through key characters such as Edward Richard, Reverend Burgess, and other supporting figures. In Twain's "The Man Who Corrupted Hadleyburg," a profound exploration of moral criticism and democratic societal systems unfolds. The narrative delves into the intricacies of character morality, exposing the vulnerabilities of individuals and the democratic decision-making processes within the framework of Hadleyburg's society. The reactions of Hadleyburg's residents to the sudden influx of gold served as a noteworthy concluding point, shedding light on the broader societal implications within the narrative. In essence, this research illuminates the multifaceted layers of social criticism embedded in "The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg," offering a nuanced understanding of the moral, societal, and individual dimensions explored by Mark Twain in this literary work.