Mark Twain

“The most conspicuous person on the planet”“The Lincoln of our literature”

• Born Samuel Langhorne Clemens in Florida, Missouri

• Raised in Hannibal, Missouri (~2 hr. North of St. Louis)– Frequently he referred to Hannibal in his

writing as “St. Petersburg” (meaning Heaven)– Enchanted for river boats, cave, Mississippi,

forests, haunted house, and mansions

Twain showed an obsessive concern with timing as the key to

success.

• Timing became his conception of destiny

• He was born prematurely under Halley’s comet and later he would claim that “nature’s freaks” would “go out together”

• He died when Halley’s comet reappeared in 1910

Jobs

• Print shop--”poor boys college”

• Steam boat pilot---one of the most revered jobs ever

• Militia man---only 2 weeks---he learned nothing about fighting but a lot about retreating

• Newspaper reporting---mining camps

• Novelist, humorist, satirist, cynic

4 Major Contributions to American Literature

• National Character/Youth

• Local color

• Humor

• Expansion of American literature

National Character/youth• Created characters people could identify

with

• Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn, western miners

Ernest Hemingway would write, "All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called 'Huckleberry Finn'."

• Spirit of youth part of national consciousness

Local Color

• Regionalism

• Vernacular style– Colloquial speech of various regions – Rhythms and expressiveness of a natural

poetry

Humor

• Accomplished through a variety of techniques– Incongruity, satire, story telling, dialect,

inversion, exaggeration, irony, …

• Raised American humor to an art by showing American their own humanity– Humor begins with imperfections– “The is no humor in heaven,” he wrote.

Expansion of Literature

• Western gold mining camps in Nevada and San Fran.

• Connecticut

On his death

• Twain did not want his last writings published until 100 years after his death, when the world, he thought, would be ready for them– Pessimism with democratic progress

• 100 years after is death (2010) his autobiography was published

“The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County”

• Framed story– Through voice and character

• Vernacular– Common speech of uneducated Western miner

• Incongruity• Exaggeration• Oral humor• Complete reading guide and pg 397

study and discuss ?s (2, 3, 4, 5)

“Baker’s Bluejay Yarn”

• No frame---just a paragraph of intro

• Man understands the conversations of animals

• Satire---by attributing human characteristics to bluejays

• Complete reading guide and study and discussion p. 401 ?s 3, 5, 6

Excerpt from The Adventures of

Huckleberry Finn• Video • Vernacular• National youth• Slavery & freedom• Safety of the river• River as a journey

through life/boyhood• Complete reading

guide

How does each passage represent a different theme in

Huck Finn?• Mississippi (textbook)

excerpt• “Was Solomon Wise”

excerpt

Excerpt from Life on the Mississippi

• Mississippi where Twain took his pen name

• “by the mark, twain,” which meant that the water was a safe depth of two fathoms

• Complete reading guide and study and discuss ?s pg 4121, 5