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 offers a different concept of Mark Twain, who worshiped Joan of Arc and considered her the ideal of womanhood.

There are critics who believe that the real Mark Twain was born in the East, while others say that the frontier made him. I have considered evidence on both sides and have definitely concluded that Mark Twain was and is a product of the frontier.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-11T19:32:49Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2006-02-10Bitstream added on 2014-06-13T18:44:16Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 doca_hh_dr_assis.pdf: 8916292 bytes, checksum: 8f6acbb180aa070c368f83b1ea070b0a (MD5) / A leitura cuidadosa do texto do Tratado de Paris, em 1900, leva Mark Twain a concluir que a intenção política norte-americana era, claramente, a de subjugação. Declara-se, abertamente, antiimperialista nesse momento, apesar das inúmeras críticas recebidas por antagonistas políticos que defendiam o establishment dos Estados Unidos. Após viajar para a Europa e Oriente, em 1867, como correspondente do jornal Daily Alta Califórnia, Mark Twain publica, em 1869, seu relato de viagem, The Innocents Abroad or The New Pilgrim's Progress. Nosso estudo demonstra que o autor, apesar das diversas máscaras usadas em seus relatos, narra histórias, culturas e tradições, tanto da Europa quanto do Oriente, já com os olhos bem abertos pelo viés antiimperialista. Faz uso da paródia, sátira, ironia e humor para dessacralizar impérios, monarcas e a Igreja que subjugavam os mais fracos, iluminando, desde então, os estudos sobre culturas. O primeiro capítulo de nosso estudo enfoca os problemas que a Literatura Comparada enfrenta face à globalização, descolonização e democratização, norteado pelo Relatório Bernheimer, como também faz uma reflexão sobre cultura, tradição e o olhar do viajante, justificando o olhar do narrador de The Innocents Abroad. Como pressupostos teóricos, usamos autores como Eliot, Edward Said, Todorov, Foucault, dentre outros. O capítulo subseqüente traz o histórico sobre como se procedeu o ideário antiimperialista de Mark Twain, além de uma abordagem geral em algumas de suas obras. Nosso próximo passo trata do inocente relato twainiano, dando uma compreensão maior ao leitor de como foi feita a colonização norte-americana, como a personagem burlesca é construída e também demonstra o modo como as ilustrações do livro foram delineadas. Encerramos nosso estudo balizando os entrechos de toda a expedição twainiana, que trazem à luz sua posição contra impérios. / The careful reading of the Trait of Paris, in 1900, leads Mark Twain to conclude that America intended policy was clearly one of subjugation. He frankly declares himself an anti-imperialist at that time, notwithstanding the several criticisms he had received from political antagonists who had been defending the United States establishment for a long time. Having traveled to Europe and to the East in 1867 as the Daily Alta California's newspaper correspondent, Mark Twain edits, in 1869, his travel report, The Innocents Abroad or The New Pilgrim's Progress. Our study demonstrates that the author, in spite of using different masks in his reports, narrates histories, cultures and traditions from both Europe and the East with his point of view imbued by his anti-imperialistic ideal. By using in his texts parody, satire, irony and humor to desacralize empires, monarchs, and the Church that had been subjugating the weaker since the Old Age, he highlights, indeed, the cultural studies. The first chapter of our study focuses on Comparative Literature problems, face to globalization, decolonization and democratization, ruled by the Bernheimer Report. It also reflects on themes as culture, tradition and the traveler point of view, justifying the narrator innocent point of view in his report. For theorical support we've concentrated on Eliot, Said, Todorov, Foucault's among others. Subsequently, our study brings up Mark Twain's anti-imperialism way as a general approach to his work. Our next step is focused on the American colonization, and then we demonstrate how Mark Twain created his travel report as a burlesque character and also the way the illustrations of the book were drawn. Finally, we enclose our study highlighting several fragments of The Innocents Abroad that clearly demonstrate Mark Twain's position against empires.

This thesis discusses American prairie culture through the writings of Thorstein Veblen and Mark Twain.

Innocents Abroad, a musical for the stage, deals with events in the life of Mark Twain, 1867-1869, particularly his courtship of Olivia Langdon and his efforts to establish himself as a writer. It emphasizes his struggle to be true to his individuality and outspoken honesty while trying to win "Livy," the product of the society he satirized and often condemned. The book, based on actual events, contains much of Twain's humor and wisdom. The vocal score is written in a contemporary style, for various vocal combinations, including full chorus and includes piano accompaniments and chord symbols for guitar and bass.

This dissertation reconsiders the relationship between fiction and slavery in American literary culture. “Prisoners of Style” shows how writers from the middle of the nineteenth to the middle of the twentieth century, including Hannah Crafts, Mark Twain, Charles Chesnutt, and William Faulkner, wrestled with enslavement. They found it not only a subject to be written about, but also a problem of characterization. Slavery and the ontological sorcery through which it produced a new kind of individual—the individual who is also a thing—led these authors to rethink basic formal assumptions about realist fiction, especially about what constitutes a literary character. The writers I discuss did not set out to argue for the slave’s humanity or to render her interiority, but instead sought to represent the systematic unmaking of black personhood perpetrated by the laws and institutions that governed chattel slavery in the US. They set out to reveal the ideological violence perpetrated against enslaved blacks, and they did so by writing characters who embodied the categorical uncertainty of the slave, characters who were not allegories for real, full people. The tradition of writing I describe does not represent the fullness of enslaved “persons”; instead it renders something far more abstract: the epistemology that undergirded enslavement—those patterns of thought that preconditioned slavery itself. The authors I study understood fictionality as a thorny ethical, epistemological, and political problem. In my chapter on Crafts, for example, I look at The Bondwoman’s Narrative alongside a set of non-fiction texts about Jane Johnson, the slave who preceded her in John Hill Wheeler’s household. Reading the novel against legal documents, pamphlets, and histories about Johnson and her escape from Wheeler, the chapter explores what fiction could do that these other modes of writing could not. In moments of sleep, amnesia, and daydreaming, Crafts resists the normative logic of subjecthood and individual rights that underpins the representations of Johnson. In the second half of the project, I demonstrate the significance of fictionality to American literary realism’s evolution into modernism. The final chapter, on Faulkner, places two of his Yoknapatawpha novels within the context of his interest in modernist painting and sculpture. Work by Picasso, Matisse, and other visual artists inspired his concern with surfaces and flatness, leading to a meditation on artifice that runs throughout his major novels. I argue that his flatness—his insistence on the non-referential quality of fiction—is crucial for understanding his characterization and philosophy of history history, in particular the history of Southern plantation slavery.

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