Mark Twain and Company : Six Literary Relations

by Krauth, Leland

• ISBN13: 9780820325408
• ISBN10: 0820325406
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-10-01
• Publisher: Univ of Georgia Pr

Summary

In this comparison of Mark Twain with six of his literary contemporaries, Leland Krauth looks anew at the writer's multifaceted creativity. Twain, a highly lettered man immersed in the literary culture of his time, viewed himself as working within a community of writers. He likened himself to a guild member whose work was the crafted product of a common trade--and sometimes made with borrowed materials.Yet there have been few studies of Twain in relation to his fellow guild members. InMark Twain & Company, Krauth examines some creative "sparks and smolderings" ignited by Twain's contact with certain writers, all of whom were published, read, and criticized on both sides of the Atlantic: the Americans Bret Harte, William Dean Howells, and Harriet Beecher Stowe and the British writers Matthew Arnold, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Rudyard Kipling.Each chapter explores the nature of Twain's personal relationship with a writer as well as the literary themes and modes they shared. Krauth looks at the sentimentality of Harte and Twain and its influence on their protest fiction; the humor and social criticism of Twain and Howells; the use of the Gothic by Twain and Stowe to explore racial issues; the role of Victorian Sage assumed by Arnold and Twain to critique civilization; the exploitation of adventure fiction by Twain and Stevenson to reveal conceptions of masculinity; and the use of the picaresque in Kipling and Twain to support or subvert imperialism.Mark Twain & Companycasts new light on some of the most enduring writers in English. At the same time it refreshes the debate over the transatlantic nature of Victorianism with new insights about nineteenth-century morality, conventionality, race, corporeality, imperialism, manhood, and individual identity.

Author Biography

Leland Krauth is an associate professor of English at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. ix
List of Abbreviations	p. xiii
Introduction	p. 1
Wringing the Human Heart: Mark Twain and Bret Harte	p. 14
Creating Humor: Mark Twain and William Dean Howells	p. 49
Exposing the Body in Protest: Mark Twain and Harriet Beecher Stowe	p. 87
Holding Up the Looking Glass: Mark Twain and Matthew Arnold	p. 126
Assaying Manliness: Mark Twain and Robert Louis Stevenson	p. 166
Wandering Devious: Mark Twain and Rudyard Kipling	p. 209
Conclusion: Viewing Mark Twain	p. 258
Notes	p. 263
Works Cited and Consulted	p. 279
Index	p. 301
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