Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens)
|
Major Issues Major IssuesMark Twain’s harsh criticism and ridicule of contemporary fiction’s conventions have been adopted by many critics in their analysis of Twain’s work. Twain argued that fiction dangerously distorts, misrepresents, and obscures reality. It is not to be trusted. Instead, he praised what he labelled the "native novelist," who would observe rather than invent and present an "artless" record of the speech and life around him. Critics have noted Twain’s success as a comic travel writer, the form and tone of which he brought over to some of his longer fictional work. The tall tale is another genre that Twain successfully adopted and infused with satiric humor. Twain’s portrayal of Southern and frontier societies, including slavery and racism, has been the focus of many scholarly studies. Author LinksMark Twain
Resources on the WWW
|