美国文学 马克吐温及其作品赏析 Mark Twain

movement. The truthful depiction of the common people added strength to the Realism which Howells championed with James and Mark Twain.
2. The local spirit continues to inspire and fertilize the
求自由，反对腐朽的黑奴制度的主题。美国著名作家海明威说，“一切
现代美国文学来自一本书，即马克·吐温的《哈克贝利·费恩历险 记》„„这是我们所有书中最好的。一切美国文学都来自这本书，在它
之前，或在它之后，都不曾有过能与之媲美的作品。”
Major Themes
slavery and racism. in the novel, by exposing the hypocrisy of
1889
B. 1870s-90s: later works become darker and more obscure,
showing his discontent and disappointment toward the social
reality.
The Gilded Age 1873 Life on Mississippi 1883 The Adventures of Tom Sawyer 1876 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn 1886
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
Local Colorism (Regionalism)
As a literary trend, local colorism first appeared in the late
1860’s and early 70’s. Pret Harte’s The Luck of Roaring Camp in
imagination of authors such as Willa Cather, John Steinbeck and William Faulkner, who ultimately managed, by rooting their works in their places, to the planes of universal meaning.
On the other hand, the book record the rising Age of American
Bourgeois system. It also bears the irony and satire toward the religion and by-then popular rigid, didactic children education, which curbed the imagination of children and their innate nature for freedom and adventures and molded them into a stereotype of lifeless man.

Fiction writers like Sarah Orne Jewett, Bret Harte, and Mark Twain have been identified within this tradition.
Influence of Local Colorism:
1. For over 3 decades, it formed an important part of the realistic
The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County (a frontier
humor which made Twain become famous)1865
Innocents Abroad 1869 A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
“The true father of our national literature”
— H. L. Mencken
“In my opinion, Mark Twain was the first truly American writer,

The style of writing derived from the presentation of the features and peculiarities of a particular locality and its inhabitants. Simply it means the use of regional detail in a
and all of us since are his heirs, who descended from him.”

— William Faulkner
Major Works
three periods
A. 1860’s : earlier works are light, humorous, optimistic.
such as Miss Watson and Sally Phelps express no concern about the injustice of slavery or the cruelty of separating Jim from his family.
It is easy to see that the novel provides an allegory to explain how and why slavery is wrong. Twain uses Jim, a main character and a slave, to demonstrate the humanity of slaves. Jim expresses the complicated human emotions and struggles with the path of his life. To prevent being sold and forced to separate from his family, Jim runs away from his owner, Miss Watson, and works towards obtaining freedom so he can buy his family’s freedom. All along their journey downriver, Jim cares for and protects of Huck, not as a servant, but as a friend. Thus, Twain's encourages the reader to feel sympathy and empathy for Jim and outrage at the society that has enslaved him and threatened his life.
literary or artistic work.

Local Colorists concerned with presenting and interpreting the local characteristic of their regions, they tended to idealize and glorify, but they never forgot to keep an eye on the truthful color of local life.
slavery, Twain demonstrates how racism distorts the oppressors as much as it does those who are oppressed. The result is a world
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of moral confusion, in which “seemingly good” white people
C. 1890s-20th century：His last works shows his
acute pessimism, despair, skepticism determinism.
The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg 1900 The mysterious stranger 1916 Roughing It
1868 drew the attention of the nation to a new genre of writing. In 1880’s it reached its climax; not until the turn of the century did it cease to be a dominant fashion, as its limited resources were exhausted.
Harlem Garland defined it as: “having such quality of texture and
background that it could not have been written in any other place or by anyone else than a native.”
floats a small raft, with two people on it: one is an ignorant,
uneducated Black slave named Jim and the other is a little uneducated outcast white boy about the age of 13, call Huckleberry Finn. The book relates the story of the escape of Jim from slavery and, more important, how Huck, floating along with Jim and helping him as best he could, changed his mind, his prejudice against black people, and came to accept Jim as a man and a close friend as well.