This book explores Twain's major writings as they address the New World and the Old, race, slavery, imperialism, the possibility of American literary form and the limits of humour. Twain's humour is an expression of the pleasure and fun of life, but it is also a response to ultimate contradictions and losses. It is particularly American in that it rarely points to harmonies that might actually be enjoyed beyond itself. It is the humour of someone always on the move if not on the run. The absence of any destination in Twain, other than the ultimate one of death, is why his work is so formally unsettled. There is no point of clarification where author, narrator and readers can be expected to arrive together. Texts treated in this book include The Innocents Abroad, Roughing It, Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, Life on the Mississippi, The Gilded Age, A Connecticut Yankee, Pudd'nhead Wilson, Following the Equator, The Mysterious Stranger, and several short pieces.
- ISBN10 9051835779
- ISBN13 9789051835779
- Publish Date 1 January 1994
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 25 October 2016
- Publish Country NL
- Publisher Brill
- Imprint Editions Rodopi B.V.
- Format Paperback (US Trade)
- Pages 139
- Language English
- URL http://brill.com/product_id80338