Mark Twain and the Art of the Tall TaleMark Twain and the Art of the Tall Tale is a study of a peculiar American comic strategy and its role in Mark Twain's fiction. Focusing on the writer's experiments with narrative structure, Wonham describes how Twain manipulated conventional approaches to reading and writing by engaging his audience in a series of rhetorical games--the rules of which he adapted from the conventions of tall tale in American oral and written traditions. Wonham goes on to show how Twain's appropriation of the genre developed through the course of his career, from The Innocents Abroad to Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn, and Pudd'nhead Wilson. This eminently readable study will interest Twain enthusiasts and students of nineteenth-century American literature, as well as anyone interested in American humor and oral narrative traditions. |
Contents
| 3 | |
1 The Emergence of Tall Narrative in American Writing | 17 |
2 Mark Twains Development as a Literary Yarn Spinner | 51 |
Travelling with the Innocent Abroad | 70 |
4 The Tall Tale as Theme and Structure in Roughing It | 89 |
Old Times on the Mississippi | 112 |
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Common terms and phrases
absurdity Adventures attitude audience becomes Berkeley Bernard DeVoto Bixby Bricksville Browne's burlesque California Chapter character Clemens comic community of knowers credulity cultural insiders deadpan deadpan expression describes DeVoto dramatic early effect entertainment episode exaggerated experience fantasy fiction Franklin frontier Harper Henry Nash Smith Howells Huck Huck's Huckleberry Finn humorist imagination Innocents Abroad interpretive community irony James James Kirke Paulding language laugh listeners literary yarn spinner mance Mark Twain ment Mississippi naive narrative performance narrator narrator's never novel oral parody Paulding Paulding's performance and response perspective pilot house play privileged Pudd'nhead Wilson reader rhetorical river Robinson role romantic Roughing Samuel Samuel L satire Sawyer sketch spinning stage story storytelling stranger style suspension of disbelief tale's tall humor tall narrative tall tale tall-tale tenderfoot tion tive Tom's truth vernacular victim Virginia City Walter Blair writer yarn spinner's art yarn-spinning community York