Mark Twain(英文简介)

Mark Twain

Mark

Twain

(1835

–

19l0)

is

a

great

literary

giant

of

America,

whom

H.

L.

Mencken

considered “the true father of our national literature.” With works like Adventure of Huckleberry

Finn (1884) and Life on the Mississippi (1883) Twain shaped the world’s view

of America and

made a more extensive combination of American folk humor and serious literature than previous

writers had ever done.

1. Brief Introduction to the Author

Mark Twain, Pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, was born on November 30, 1835, in

Missouri, and grew up in the river town of Hannibal. After his father died, he began to seek his

own fortune .He once worked as a journeyman printer, a steamboat pilot, a newspaper colunist and

as a deadpan lecturer. Twain’s writing took the form of humorous

journalism of the time, and it

ennabled him to master the technique of narration.

Twain grew up in Hannibal, Missouri, which provided the setting for Huckleberry Finn and

Tom

Sawyer.

After

an

apprenticeship

with

a

printer,

he

worked

as

a

typesetter

and

contributed

articles

to

his

older

brother

Orion’s

newspaper.

He

later

became

a

riverboat

pilot

on

the

Mississippi

River

before

heading

west

to

join

Orion

in

Nevada.

He

referred

humorously

to

his

singular lack of success at mining, turning to journalism for the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise.

In 1865, his humorous story, “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” was published,

based on a story he heard at Angels Hotel in Angels Camp California where he had spent some

time as a miner. The short story brought international attention, even being translated to classic

Greek. His wit and satire, in prose and in speech, earned praise from critics and peers, and he was

a friend to presidents, artists, industrialists, and European royalty.

Though Twain earned a great deal of money from his writings and lectures, he invested in

ventures that lost a great deal of money, notably the Paige Compositor, which failed because of its

complexity and imprecision. In the wake of these financial setbacks he filed for protection from

his

creditors

via

a

bankruptcy

filing,

and

with

the

help

of

Henry

Huttleston

Rogers

eventually

overcame his financial troubles. Twain chose to pay all his pre-bankruptcy creditors in full, though

he had no responsibility to do this under the law.

Twain was born shortly after a visit by Halley’s Comet, and he predicted that he would “go

out with it,” too. He died the day following the comet’s subsequent return. He was lauded as the

“greatest

American

humorist

of

his

age,”

and

William

Faulkner

called

Twain

“the

father

of

American literature.”

2. Mark Twain’s major works

In l865, he pub1ished his frontier tale “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,”

which brought him recognition from a wider public. But his full literary career began to blossom

in 1869 with a travel book Innocents Abroad, an account of American tourists in Europe which

pokes

fun

at

the

pretentious,

decadent

and

undemocratic

Old

World

in

a

satirical

tone.

Mark

Twain’s best works were produced when he was in the prime o

f his life. All these masterworks

drew

upon

the

scenes

and

emotions

of

his

boyhood

and

youth.

The

first

among

these

books

is

Roughing It (1872), in which Twain describes a journey that works its way farther west. Life on

the Mississippi tells a story of his boyhood ambition to become a riverboat pilot. Two of the best

books

during

this

period

are

The

Adventures

of

Tom

Sawyer

(1876)

and

Adventures

of

Huckleberry Finn. The former is usually regarded as a classic book written for boys about their

particular ho

rrors and joys, while the latter, being a boy’s book specially written for the adults, is

Twain’s most representative work, describing a journey down the Mississippi undertaken by two

fugitives, Huck and Jim. Their episodic set of encounters presents a sample of the social world

from the bank of the river that runs through the heart of the country.

His social satire is The Gilded Age, written in collaboration with Charles Dudley Warner. The

novel

explored

the

scrupulous

individualism

in

a

world

of

fantastic

speculation

and

unstable

values, and gave its name to the get-rich-quick years of the post-

Civil War era. Twain’s dark view

of the society became more self-evident in the works published later in his life. In A Connecticut

Yankee

in

King

Arthur’s

Court

(

1889),

a

parable

of

colonialization.

A

similar

mood

of

despair

permeates

The

Tragedy

of

Pudd’nhead

Wilson

(1894),

which

shows

the

disastrous

effects

of

slavery on the victimizer and the victim alike and reveals to us a Mark Twain whose conscience as

a

white

Southerner

was

tormented

by

fear

and

remorse.

By

the

turn

of

the

century,

with

the

publication of The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg (l900) and The Mysterious Stranger (1916),

the change in Mark Twain from an optimist to an almost despairing pessimist could be felt and his

cynicism and disillusionment with what Twain referred to regularly as the “damned human race”

became obvious.

3. The Characteristics of Mark Twain’s Writing Style

1) Twain as a local colorist

Twain is also known as a local colorist, who preferred to present social life through portraits

of the local characters of his regions, including people living in that area, the landscape, and other

peculiarities like the customs, dialects, costumes and so on. Consequently, the rich material of his

boyhood

experience

on

the

Mississippi

became

the

endless

resources

for

his

fiction,

and

the

Mississippi valley and the West became his major theme. Unlike James and Howe1ls, Mark Twain

wrote about the lower-class people, because they were the people he knew so we1l ancl their 1ife

was the one he himself had lived. Moreover he successfully used local color and historical settings

to i1lustrate and shed light on the contemporary society.

2) His use of vernacular

Another fact that made Twain unique is his magic power with language, his use of vernacular.

His

words

are

col1oquial,

concrete

and

direct

in

effect,

and

his

sentence

structures

are

simp1e,

even

ungrammatical,

which

is

typical

of

the

spoken

1anguage.

And

Twain

skillfully

used

the

colloquialism to cast

his protagonists in their everyday life. What’s more, his characters, confined

to a particular region and to a particular historical moment, speak with a strong accent, which is

true

of

his

1ocal

colorism.

Besides,

different

characters

from

different

literary

or

cultural

backgrounds

talk

differently,

as

is

the

case

with

Huck,

Tom,

and

Jim.

Indeed,

with

his

great

mastery

and

effective

use

of

vernacular,

Twain

has

made

colloquial

speech

an

accepted,

respectable 1iterary medium in the literary history of the country. His style of language was later

taken

up

by

his

descendants,

Sherwood

Anderson

and

Ernest

Hemingway,

and

influenced

generations of letters.

3) His humor

Mark Twain’s humor is remarkable, too. It is fun to read Twain to begin with, for most of his

works tend to be funny, containing some practical jokes, comic details, witty remarks, etc., and

some

of

them

are

actually

tall

ta1es.

By

considering

his

experience

as

a

newspaperman,

Mark