Mark Twain

1
Mark Twain

• Humor
• Boys on the River
• How Things Really Are
• How We Really Speak

2
Humor

• Satire
• Lectures
• Perception of lifes absurdities and human
  pretensions

3
Boys on the River

• Twain captured a nostalgia for the free, carefree
  existence of childhood and associated it with the
  frontier
• The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

4
How Things Really Are

• Twain used satire to attack a romanticized view
  of reality
• The Literary Offenses of James Fenimore Cooper
• Wrecked steamboat, The Walter Scott, in Huck
  Finn, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthurs Court
• Realities of slavery in Puddnhead Wilson, and
  Huck Finn

5
How We Really Speak

• Twain established American dialectal speech as a
  literary language
• The Southwestern Humorists
• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn