This thesis discusses Mark Twain as a political satirist in Nevada and during the Gilded Age. There are also chapters covering Politics and Slavery, Democracy and Monarchy, as well as Imperialism and War.

The purpose of this paper is to picture the West as Mark Twain saw it. Many books have been written which describe Twain's Western years, but few have given much consideration to the accuracy of his account of the West in the 1860's. This paper attempts to portray Twain not only as a social and political satirist, but also as a possible historical satirist.

An examination of the persistent death motif in Twain's literature reveals a strong fusion of his art, personal experience and philosophical conclusions. Death imagery dramatizes Twain's pessimistic view of an estranged humanity existing without purpose or direction in an incomprehensible universe. Twain shows in his works that religious and social beliefs only obscure the fact that the meaning of death is beyond man's intellectual and perceptual powers. In Twain's view the only certainty about death is that it is a release from the preordained tragedies of existence. Illusions, primordial terrors, and mystifying dreams shape man's disordered reality, Twain concludes, and therefore death is as meaningless as life.

Thesis (M.A.)--Florida State University, 2004. / Advisor: Dr. W.T. Lhamon, Jr., Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Dept. of English. Title and description from dissertation home page (viewed June 16, 2004). Includes bibliographical references.

No description available.

Divided into five chapters, the thesis analyzes the translation into French of Black English as represented in Mark Twain's novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The method, mainly text-oriented, that is to say turning away from the sociological approach, offers a semiotic reading of the text, both original and translated (Chapter 1). This semiotic approach considers the text as a significant mosaic. Thus, it brings out not only the motivation of the different textual elements, but also the coherence cementing them. The analysis of the original text (Chapter 2) shows that the subversive aesthetic and ideological function of Black English is provided by Jim's characterization and his discursive and narrative programs. William-Little Hughes's translation (1886), as well a Claire Laury's (1979) and Rene and Yolande Surleau's (1950), reverse the subversive project of the source-text through an organized system of textual transformations (additions, omissions, shifts) and produce a stereotyped version of Jim's character, his speech, also simplified and reduced, becoming the expression of this characterization (Chapter 3). Poles apart from these three texts, the French versions written by Suzanne Netillard (1948), Andre Bay (1961), Lucienne Molitor (1963), Jean La Graviere (1979) and Helene Costes (1980) display translation projects which reactivate the original system in which Jim had a multidimensional characterization (Chapter 4). Yet, despite the efficient options chosen by certain translators on the material level, Jim's speech in French does not convey a Black identity in the way Black English does in the original text. A modified and literary version of creolized French is suggested as a possible option for translating this sociolect (Chapter 5).

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Virginia, 1998. / Description based on content as of June 1999. Title from title screen.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2003. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references. Available also from UMI Company.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1963. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 294-303).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1956. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 304-314).