Mark Twain Research Articles

The Year’s Work in American Humor Studies, 2021

The Year’s Work in American Humor Studies, 2021

The Congo Curse: From Heart of Darkness through King Leopold’s Ghost, King Leopold’s Soliloquy to In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz: Living on the Brink of Disaster in Mobutu’s Congo

This article explores the intricacies that have shaped the political and economic landscape of Congo from colonial period to post-independence times. The examination of the situation in Congo is undertaken though the eyes of Joseph Conrad in Heart of Darkness (1899), Mark Twain in King Leopold’s Soliloquy (1905), Adam Hochschild in King Leopold’ Ghost (1998) and Michela Wrong in In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz: Living on the Brink of Disaster in Mobutu’s Congo (2000). In his novella, Conrad navigates through the Congo River and penetrates into the interior of Congo and ushers us to the emergence of European imperial powers in Africa. In this compelling tale, Conrad explores the European’s exploration and exploitation of the Congo under Belgium’s King Leopold II. In King Leopold’s Soliloquy Mark Twain largely satirizes King Leopold’s self-importance while plundering Congo while Hochschild in King Leopold’ Ghost advances King Leopold’s state capture of Congo Free State and making the country his own property. Michela Wrong’s In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz captures Congo’s tribulation under Mobutu’s regime. Wrong navigates the political journey of post-independence Congo and seems to suggest that the Congolese people are not free from political and economic sabotage from leaders who have personalized the country even after the exit of the white man. This paper therefore examines the personalities of King Leopold II of Belgium and Joseph Desire Mobutu of the independent Congo as projected in the selected texts. The article shows that the Congo curse is deeply rooted in the country’s political leadership and examines the insatiable appetite of King Leopold II and Joseph Desire Mobutu for the mineral wealth through the lenses of the four selected texts.

Dispatches from the Farm: The Literary Craft of John Gould’s Maine Humor

Dispatches from the Farm: The Literary Craft of John Gould’s Maine Humor

Settler Colonialism and Harte’s Frontier Ecogothic in “Three Vagabonds of Trinidad”

Abstract: The paper proposes to examine the tangled relationship between race and environment in the nineteenth-century American literary tradition by looking at the gothic representation of the three vagabond characters in relation to the Californian coastal landscape in Bret Harte’s “Three Vagabonds of Trinidad” (1900). Critically seen as a reworking of Mark Twain’s Adventures o f Huckleberry Finn (1884), Harte’s story continues the questioning of the civilization/wilderness dichotomy in Twain’s work, but the story complicates its racial-ecological dynamics by shifting the focus from a white boy and a black slave to a Chinese orphan, a Native American vagrant, and a dog, and relocating their tramping and foraging from the Mississippi river to the pine forest and marshland at the Pacific coast of a frontier town in California. Harte’s repositioning of racialized (as well as politicized) persecution at the western frontier articulates an ecogothic allegory on a transcontinental (as well as trans-global) scale, in which a seemingly ordinary western settlement is turned from what Leo Marx considers a pastoral-industrial “middle landscape” into a liminal haunting (as well as hunting) ground. The paper examines how Harte’s account of Trinidad topographies reveals a multi-layered ecological space and a haunted Romantic landscape that unsettles environmental as well as social order, reflecting racialized political exclusions during the course of the nineteenth century through legalized policies, such as the 1830 Indian Removal Act, the 1855 Vagrancy Act, and the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act restricting the spatial mobilities of Native Americans, Chinese immigrants, and other minority groups. The paper will focus on the intersection of orientalism, settler colonialism, and environmentalism, rethinking how the enmeshed race-environment relationship in Harte’s writing, informed by the social and political practices of westward expansionism and racial segregation of his time, might reveal a subtler process of ecological othering, unveiling the parasitical relationship between racial exploitation and environmental destruction.

Iowa Funds Expansion of Rural Psychiatry Training, Services for Underserved Populations

Iowa Funds Expansion of Rural Psychiatry Training, Services for Underserved Populations

Anthropogenic channel network development in forested watersheds by recent stream channelization practices in Mark Twain National Forest, Missouri Ozarks

Human modifications of stream systems often result in channel instability and sediment pulse- induced problems. While previous research explored the direct anthropogenic impacts of channelization on fluvial systems, the history of repeated channelization, their persistent impacts on headwater streams and subsequent evolution of a drainage system need further investigation. This study evaluates the spatial distribution of channel form and stability in Big Barren Creek watershed, which drains the karst dominated Ozark Highlands of southeast Missouri. The objectives of this research are threefold: (i) describe channel morphology and hydrology in undisturbed and disturbed segments based on field data, (ii) propose a conceptual model of channel modification and response to explain the patterns of channel adjustment and (iii) evaluate the history of channel disturbance using historical aerial photograph analysis. Results show that disturbed reaches have larger channel dimensions than undisturbed reaches because channelization increased stream power and shear stress, particularly for channels that are actively incising. Channelized reaches are primarily identified on private land where headcuts developed and migrated upstream to the national forestland. Sediment supply to the channel increases from both upstream incision and bank and levee collapse resulting in downstream aggradation, which forces landowners to repeat channelization for flood control. The proposed conceptual model suggests that while the disturbed segments evolve into wider and deeper channels following channelization, they exhibit the potential to become stable over time because of biogeomorphic resistance (e.g., in-channel vegetation, armored-cohesive soil) related to the ephemeral nature of the streams in this karst region. This idea is also supported by the slower average headcut migration rate of earlier channelization (2 m/yr) compared to recent channelization (6–8 m/yr). However, channel adjustment largely depends on repeated channelization that resets the evolutionary stages that preclude this fluvial system from attaining stability.

Gold Standard

The subjects of these two books basically belonged to the same generation. Philip Rahv (1908–73) and Michael Gold (1894–1967) shared origins in the Jewish lower class, and rose to literary prominence during the Great Depression. But from the perspective of posterity, what especially links their names is the notion of “proletarian literature.” In novels and short stories, in sketches and poetry, in drama and reportage, the writers who generally accepted this label repudiated the genteel tradition that had crested in the late Victorian era. To be sure, that decorous era of belles lettres had always been contested. It had its outliers – most famously Mark Twain. The list of those who troubled the taste of the era also included, among younger writers, the barely housebroken Theodore Dreiser and Jack London.

The Critical Reception of Mark Twain's Introduction to English as She is Taught

The Critical Reception of Mark Twain's Introduction to <i>English as She is Taught</i>

An Exploration of the Chinese Image and Its Cultural Authenticity in Mark Twain's Literature

Mark Twain is an essential American writer from the mid-nineteenth century to the early twentieth century. Many images and descriptions of the Chinese appear in his works, which have attracted the attention of many scholars in China. This paper explores whether the images of Chinese in Mark Twain's works are consistent with cultural authenticity from the perspective of cultural authenticity. So as to clarify the representative Chinese images in Mark Twain's works and whether their description conforms to the authenticity of Chinese culture. At the same time, it also provides a new way of thinking to explore the specific reasons for the way of presenting Chinese images.

Mark Twain Fakeographs

Mark Twain was an occasional target of fakeographers, a school of paparazzi and engravers who employed an early type of photoshopping to manipulate images published in newspapers and magazines.1 In the periodical press there were several points at which manipulation could take place: by overlaying two or more camera negatives; by inking out parts of the single or multiple exposure; or by alterations performed on the engraving process block. The altered yet realistic image, different from line-drawn caricature, occasionally had nefarious uses but was usually designed for comic effect. For example, in February 1892, the London Idler printed an altered version of a photograph by Napoleon Sarony taken in 1883. (Figure 1.) In the fakeograph Mark Twain clenches a corncob pipe in his teeth.2 (Figure 2.)The frontispiece to Following the Equator (1897) taken by photographer Walter G. Chase3 (Figure 3) famously became the basis for a gag fakeograph by Thomas S. Frisbie with Twain sitting in a chair in the back of a crude cow-and-horse drawn carriage.4 (Figure 4.) In a letter to Frisbie, an employee at the American Publishing Company, Twain comically expresses his satisfaction: “I consider that this picture is much more than a work of art. How much more, one cannot say with exactness, but I should think two-thirds more.”5But by far the most egregious example of a Mark Twain fakeograph, a hoax without comic purpose, was syndicated in newspapers across the country a few days after the marriage of Twain's secretary Isabel Lyon and business manager Ralph Ashcroft in New York on 18 March 1909. Though Twain thought their wedding “was an insane idea &amp; unbelievable,” he agreed to attend. Counting the bride, groom, minister, the Holy Trinity, and himself, as he joked later, nine persons were present. He told a reporter that the newlyweds’ romance began as a “business association,” “ripened into warm friendship, and then grew worse.”6 The bride and groom posed for photographs after the ceremony.7 Six days after the wedding, the first fakeograph based on a wedding photo of the couple and featuring Mark Twain appeared in out-of-town, mostly provincial newspapers. Credited to the photographer William Ironson (1867–1929), who worked for the Hearst Syndicate and the Hearst-based International News Service, it was copied in the Central New Jersey Home News, the Owensboro, Ky., Messenger, the Salt Lake Herald-Republican, the Washington Herald, the Butte Miner, and the Winston-Salem Journal.8 But make no mistake: it was a fraud. Ironson superimposed a candid snapshot of Twain with Olivia Langdon Clemens taken around 19029 (Figure 5) onto Lyon and Ashcroft's photograph to make it appear that their employer blessed their union, although ironically Michael Selden observes that Twain “appeared like a bystander” in the wedding shot.10 (Figure 6.) For the best of reasons: he was added to the picture.

Cub Reporters: American Children's Literature and Journalism in the Golden Age by Paige Gray (review)

Reviewed by: Cub Reporters: American Children's Literature and Journalism in the Golden Age by Paige Gray George Bodmer (bio) Cub Reporters: American Children's Literature and Journalism in the Golden Age, by Paige Gray. State U of New York P, 2019. Paige Gray's Cub Reporters makes the comparison between American children's literature and journalism beginning in the second half of the nineteenth century, both in defining childhood and America's growing place and prestige in the world. It is Gray's thesis that these two genres fed on one another to create realities and new models for viewing the world through artifice. This discussion falls at a particularly appropriate period in our history—her second chapter is titled "Making News and Faking Truth: Richard Harding Davis the Reporter, and the American Youth." Each chapter focuses on an exchange between journalism and children's literature: Horatio Alger, Jr., on newsboys; Richard Harding Davis, as a newspaperman who turns to writing fiction for the young; L. Frank Baum's series Aunt Jane's Nieces (1906), which deals with female journalists; the Chicago Defender Junior, which published poetry and submissions by African American children; and, finally, Louise Fitzhugh's Harriet the Spy (1992). It is especially appropriate to begin with Alger, who had a close relationship with the newsboys of New York City, in life and as subject matter for his rags-to-riches stories. Gray here makes the claim that as newsboys on the street made loud and exaggerated claims to sell their papers, they represented "journalists" at the lowest rung (and certainly we see a comparable focus on that lowest rung, the worst paid, on which industries depend, as we emerge from pandemic times). Significant to the writer's thesis here is the focus on "those young people who inspired and were inspired by the Golden Age of American children's literature during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The years between the Civil War and World War I also approximate a 'golden age' of the newspaper" (xv). One frequently hears "golden age" used to refer to these times, but a greater justification of this term is needed. For example, the author cites the success of Robert Louis Stevenson, Rudyard Kipling, Mark Twain, Frances Hodgson Burnett, E. Nesbit, Beatrix Potter, Louisa May Alcott, and A. A. Milne (xviii); few of these authors are American. Certainly, works for children during these times enjoyed greater success and allowed greater leeway in what could be presented (as likewise occurred post-World War II in American picture books), but a more precise definition is needed to [End Page 196] apply this to American literature for the young; likewise, the case must be made more clearly that this was a transitional stage for American journalism. This slight volume—there are approximately 125 pages of text—in five chapters, discusses five cases describing young characters who are actively redefining their world. The first, Alger, and his series of rags-to-riches stories are especially appropriate here because Alger portrays young people largely on their own, as bootblacks, messenger boys, and newsboys of the streets, the last helping to make the crossover to the journalism theme. The author next discusses Davis, who published Gallegher and Other Stories (1891), portraying a newspaper office boy who steadfastly tries to make sense of his world. Much is made of Davis's leap from journalist to novelist, but it's not uncommon for newspapermen to turn to fiction (e.g., Ernest Hemingway, Stephen Crane, and Robert Cormier). The following typifies the thesis here: "Through his 'cub reporter'-type characters, Davis invites young readers to participate in the process of artifice, one that includes empirical investigation as well as innovative storytelling. Both undermining and commending American journalism, Davis's characters show the artifice of the newspaper, and in doing so, show youth's ability to unsettle and reconfigure the news literally and figuratively" (18). It is an inevitable part of narrative to shape events into story, whether for a newspaper, a novel, a movie, a drama; it is why we write and why we read. Gray's third chapter concerns Baum—not The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, but the...

Архипелаговый поворот в американистике (Brian R. Roberts. Pogranichnye vody: posredi arkhipelagovykh shtatov Ameriki. Durham &amp; London: Duke University Press, 2021. 392 p.; Брайан Рассел Робертс. Пограничные воды: посреди архипелаговых штатов Америки / пер. с англ. Марии Быковой. Бостон, Санкт-Петербург: Academic Studies Press / Библиороссика, 2023. 502 с.)

The review focuses on the book by Brian R. Roberts Borderwaters: Amid the Archipelagic States of America (2021) published in Russian translation in 2023. Roberts suggests reconsidering the US culture post-continentally by viewing it as an archipelagic nation. Dispelling the ‘continental dominance’ in American studies, Roberts explores the rich imagery of borderwaters by drawing on fiction (e. g. Mark Twain’s and Zora Neale Hurston’s works) and visual arts (Miguel Covarrubias’s representations of the Caribbean). The reviewer analyzes the role of the ‘archipelagic turn’ in American studies, as well as the specific effects of the critic’s rhetoric strategy.

The Magic Lamp in American Fiction: An Archetypal Approach to Mark Twain and Kurt Vonnegut

This paper examines the symbolism of the magic lamp in Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) and Kurt Vonnegut's Hal Irwin's Magic Lamp (1957). This study, which uses an archetypal approach to the texts, demonstrates how the American authors use the literary source of the magic lamp image from the Middle Eastern folktale collection of the Arabian Nights, where the lamp essentially represents Aladdin's dream and a quick route to success. Furthermore, the two authors aim to transform this image into the motif of the American dream in its modern contexts. These two literary works likewise made an effort to use the picture as a vehicle for the issues of slavery, racial prejudice, and class inequality. Additionally, the characters’ desire to escape their social and economic constraints is, contrary to what they anticipate, frustrated because of their use of the lamp. Moreover, the wishes of the characters in both texts to escape from their social and economic restraints are, contrary to their expectations, thwarted as a result of their use of the lamp. This negative outcome renders the function of the lamp the opposite to its original function in the literary sources of the texts.

Brigham Young, Colonizer of the American West: Diaries and Office Journals, 1832–1871

Brigham Young, Colonizer of the American West: Diaries and Office Journals, 1832–1871

Speech Act and Pragmatic Implications in Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry

Speech Act and Pragmatic Implications in Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry

Crises Alongside the River: An Ecological Interpretation of Huck’s Rebellion in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, one of Mark Twain’s “Mississippi Trilogy”, can be acclaimed as an ecological novel as far as its rich ecological thoughts and insightful reflection on ecological crises are concerned. Based on Lu Shu-yuan’s “Ecological Trichotomy”, this essay is about to excavate ecological ideas manifested in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from three dimensions of Lu’s trichotomic ecology, namely natural ecology, social ecology, and spiritual ecology, and examine the internal connections between Huckleberry Finn’s rebellion against society and ecological thoughts contained in this novel.

Viper on the Hearth's Unfinished Business: Anti-Mormonism and Mormon Studies

<i>Viper on the Hearth</i>'s Unfinished Business: Anti-Mormonism and Mormon Studies

American Fiction and Cultural Transfer: An Arabic Perspective to Alan Lightman, Ernest Hemingway, and Mark Twain

Our article deals with the complexities of the process of reception of American fiction in the Arab world, viewed as cultural transfer, closely related with the circulation of knowledge between the Arab countries and the Western world, in which the Arabic rendering mediates between cultures by a process of interpretation and paraphrasing of the text in the sourcelanguage. We carefully consider the process of Arabization, and the strategies of domestication and foreignization as defined by Lawrence Venuti. Ample space is devoted to the contributions of two emblematic translators from English into Arabic: dr. Ali Al-Qasimi and his theory of translation as naturalization, and Ihsan Abbas. The practical examples have been chosen from the Arabic renderings of Alan Lightman’s Einstein’s Dreams, Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

The Specter of the Pandemic: Politics and Poetics of Cholera in 19th-Century Literature--An Introduction

In the nineteenth century, cholera made a deep impression on the collective memory of entire generations. As a human-medical borderline experience, it was a scientific driving force, a political destabilizing factor, and a challenge to poetics. At the interface of literary studies and medical history and by using nineteenth-century literary texts from North American, British, and German authors as examples, this transnational study shows for the first time comprehensively, that despite a supposed “impossibility of narration”, the traumatic pandemic experience of cholera found its way into contemporary literature, particularly in the model of the specter. Through culturally and historically framed textual analyses of literary texts by Edgar Allan Poe, Mark Twain, George Eliot, H.G. Wells, Heinrich Heine, Ricarda Huch, and others as well as a variety of contemporary life writing documents, the study explores the multifarious intersections of lifeworld and literature. Within the methodological and theoretical framework of the Medical Humanities and Gothic Studies, it thus reveals genuine strategies for making the unspeakable speakable. By the use of epi- and pandemic experience as an example of a state of emergency, the study shows how closely scientific, political, social, and cultural discourses are interwoven, how they influence each other, and what role art and literature play in these processes of exchange. The Spectre of the Pandemic thus raises awareness of the interdependence of most diverse knowledge formations and is a plea for inter- and transdisciplinary thinking and research, especially in times of crisis. The present excerpt is a translated, abridged and slightly adapted version of the introduction of the study Das Gespenst der Pandemie: Politik und Poetik der Cholera in der Literatur des 19. Jahrhunderts, originally published by frommann-holzboog publishing house.

Rural Life in "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" by Mark Twain

This research studies rural life as the setting in Mark Twain’s masterpiece, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. This research investigates rural life employed by Mark Twain as the setting in the novel. Besides, it highlights the kinds of rural settings intertwined in the story. Finally, this research also investigates how far the settings function to deliver the theme of the novel. In analyzing the work, the study applies a formalist approach that focuses on the text’s intrinsic elements, in this case, the settings. It also utilizes the qualitative method and library research as the method of the study. Finally, it is found that the settings of place are the most dominant setting that carries the novel’s rural aspect compared to the time and social settings. Mississippi River and the villages as the settings of place also play an essential role in delivering one of the story’s themes, the conflict between natural life and civilized life.