Transcript Mark Twain, (马克••吐温) Samuel Langhorne Clemens （塞缪尔•

Mark Twain
Important Points
• 1. Mark Twain’s Major Works
• 2. Characteristics of Twain’s
Writings
Mark Twain
his investments failed,
tragic events
in later life
had to give lectures to
pay off his debts,
his wife and two daughters
died
grew up on the Mississippi River
at 12, father died, left school
a printer's apprentice, a
printer, a silver miner, a
steamboat pilot and a frontier
journalist
gave him a wide
knowledge of
humanity
works
 “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras
County”
 a frontier tale that makes nationally famous
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
two adventures
book”
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
highly praised by Hemingway (“From
which all modern American literature
comes.“)
Samuel Clemens’ Major Works
• The Gilded Age written in
collaboration with Charles Dudley
Warner
• Life on the Mississippi
Samuel Clemens’ Major Works





A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s
Court
The Man That Corrupted Hardleybug
The Mysterious Stranger
Autobiography
These works contain bitter attacks on the
human race






The Innocents Abroad
Roughing It
Pudd'nhead Wilson
The Prince and the Pauper
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court
American Claimant
Writing Features
represented social life
through portraits of local
places which he knew best
local colourism
a texture of most
local color
literature，a kink
of humor
drew from his own rich fund
of knowledge of people and
places
tall tales (highly
exaggerated)
Mark Twain was the first truly
American writer, and all of us since are
his heirs, who descended from him."
he used colloquial
language,
vernacular language,
dialects
words
sentence &
structures
short
concrete
direct in effect
a master of
language
American dialect
an American language
simp1e, even ungrammatical
Mark Twain’s Writing Features
humor
is of witty remarks mocking
at small things and making
people laugh
is a kind of artistic style
used to criticize the social
injustice
The Adventures of Hucklberry Finn


commonly regarded as one of the Great
American Novels, and is one of the first
major American novels written in the
vernacular, characterized by local color
regionalism.
It is told in the first person by
Huckleberry "Huck" Finn, best friend of
Tom Sawyer and narrator of two other
Twain novels.

It noted for its colorful description of
people and places along the Mississippi
River. By satirizing a Southern antebellum
society that was already anachronistic at
the time, the book is an often scathing
look at entrenched attitudes, particularly
racism. The drifting journey of Huck and
his friend Jim, a runaway slave, down the
Mississippi River on their raft may be one
of the most enduring images of escape
and freedom in all of American literature.
Major themes


novel that embodies the search for
freedom.
He wrote during the post-Civil War period
when there was an intense white reaction
against blacks. Twain took aim squarely
against racial prejudice, increasing
segregation, lynchings, and the generally
accepted belief that blacks were subhuman. He "made it clear that Jim was
good, deeply loving, human, and anxious
for freedom."


Huck is in moral conflict with the received
values of the society in which he lives,
and while he is unable to consciously
refute those values even in his thoughts,
he makes a moral choice based on his
own valuation of Jim's friendship and
human worth, a decision in direct
opposition to the things he has been
taught.
a bildungsroman