This project examines the impact of Christian Science on American culture through the interventions of three major literary figures—Mark Twain, Willa Cather, and Theodore Dreiser—in the major debates that surrounded the movement. I argue that both Christian Science itself and the backlash against it were responses to the shifting conditions of modern life, that Christian Science and public discourse on it laid bare distinctly modern tensions and anxieties about changes in U.S. culture. Recent scholarship has pointed to the durability of the secularization thesis in the study of American literature despite the easily discernible impact of religion on American culture more broadly throughout the history of the U.S. This critical perspective has been particularly difficult to dismantle in the study of post-Civil War American literature. While it is true that Protestant Christianity lost some of its dominance in the late nineteenth century, this period also saw the rise of various influential heterodox religious groups, including Christian Science. This dissertation will make sense of why and how Christian Science captured the imaginations of so many Americans, including some of the greatest storytellers of the day. Christian Science was not the story of how a group of deluded fanatics attempted to turn back the tide of modernity. Instead, Christian Science was a product of modernity that provided a unique and, in its particular context, scientifically plausible response to the problem of human suffering. Furthermore, the controversies that surrounded Christian Science crystallized anxieties about the fate of individual autonomy in the modern U.S., the exercise of therapeutic and religious freedom, the concentration of individual wealth and power among a privileged few, the extension of American power abroad, and sexuality. Each chapter will examine a narrative or set of narratives that demonstrate how the Christian Science debates heightened and spoke to those concerns. / text

This dissertation examines Mark Twain’s literary-critical reputation from the years 1865 to 1882, as he transformed from the regional “wild humorist of the Pacific Slope” to a national and international celebrity who William Dean Howells called “the most popular humorist who ever lived.” This dissertation considers “Mark Twain” not as the name of a literary author, but as a fictional creation who was narrator and implied author of both fictional and non-fiction texts, a performer who played his role on lecture platforms and other public venues, and a celebrity whose fame spread from the American west through America and the world. The key question of this dissertation is the historical position of the “humorist,” a hierarchical cultural category that included high culture literary figures, such as James Russell Lowell and Bret Harte; literary comedians, such as Artemus Ward and Petroleum Vesuvius Nasby; and clowns and minstrels, who were placed at the bottom of the hierarchy. I argue that Mark Twain muddied the hierarchical distinctions between class-appropriate leisure and burgeoning forms of mass entertainment, between uplifting humor and debased laughter, and between the canonical literature of high culture and the passing whim of the merely popular. Through the success of The Innocents Abroad (1869) and the promotion of William Dean Howells, Mark Twain was elevated into critical discussions of literary value, and in the 1870s he entered into venues of higher prestige: so-called “quality” magazines such as the Galaxy and the Atlantic Monthly, lecture stages on the lyceum circuit and in England, and the personal realm of friendship with other authors. While Twain was accepted into some literary cultures, other critics attempted to consign him to literary oblivion, or simply ignored him, while Twain himself betrayed keen anxiety about his role as “stripèd humorist” in respectable literary realms. This dissertation thus focuses on written works, critical interpretations, and performative instances in which “Mark Twain,” as both agent and subject, brought debates over “American Humor,” “American Literature,” and “American Culture” to the fore. / text

Thesis (M.A.)--Baylor University, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 117-120).

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This dissertation is an attempt to give a picture of the Nevada frontier journalist Samuel L. Clemens and the surroundings in which he worked. It is also an assessment of the extent to which Clemens (and his alter ego Twain) can be considered a serious journalist and the extent to which he violated the very principles he championed.

This oral interpretation thesis analyzes the influences on Mark Twain's reading, traces his development as an oral interpreter, and studies his techniques for revising selections of his literature to make them more suitable for oral delivery. This study concentrates on Twain's 1884-1885 reading tour with George W. Cable because in that period Twain made his greatest advances as an oral interpreter. The impact that this tour had on Twain's later reading is also analyzed. It was discovered that the interpretation theories developed by Twain are consistent with contemporary theory and practice.

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This thesis examines the relationship between Southern literature and socio-cultural realities of the Southern region of the United States of America. Analyzing works of five distinguished Southern writers, this thesis examines the reflection of specific Southern culture features in literature of the region in the period from the end of the American Civil War to the second half of the 20th century. The thesis oppose the opinion that the primary goal of Southern literature was to promote Southern identity and its cultural superiority above the North. The central hypothesis, that is being verified by this thesis, is that despite the indisputable contribution of highly recognized Southern writers to building of Southern identity, these authors expressed in their works also often sharp critiques of the social conditions in the South.

The humor of Mark Twain has long fascinated his readers. Critics such as Messent (2007), Budd (2005), Gerber (1988) and Camfield (2005) have all analyzed Mark Twain’s humor to reveal nuances and to help further the understanding of what makes Twain’s writing humorous. However, there is a distinct gap in the research so far conducted investigating Twain’s humor in relation to young readers, which this paper will begin to address. Twain’s novel The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (2007) poses a relevant subject for this research as Twain explicitly (in the preface to the novel) professes to write both for children and adults simultaneously. Writing in such a way can be categorized as either “double address” or “dual address”, understanding these terms according to the definitions of Barbara Wall (1991). In this paper I will argue that Mark Twain manages to create “dual address” in Tom Sawyer by using what Greg Camfield (2005) calls “amiable humor” and constructing scenes out of childhood in order to produce delight and nostalgia. By reading closely excerpts of the book and analyzing Twain’s specific use of humor through three prominent theories—superiority theory, relief theory and incongruity— it becomes possible to identify what the implied reader is meant to find humorous, and therefore if Twain manages to establish a “dual address”. An understanding of Twain’s humor from the perspective of both young and adult reader furthers our understanding of the novel by revealing Twain’s implementation of complex “dual address” narration and its implications.