Routledge Revivals: Mark Twain as a Literary Comedian (1979) Routledge Revivals Series

Originally published in 1979, Mark Twain as a Literary Comedian looks at how Mark Twain addressed social issues through humour. The Southwest provided the subject for much of Twain?s writing, but the roots of his style lay principally in north-eastern humour. In the mid-1800s the northern United States underwent social changes that reflected in the writing of the literary humourists like Twain. Sloane argues that he used humour to describe conditions in the emerging middle-class urban experience and express his American vision and that Twain?s views on the human, social, and political conditions, presented through his fictional characters, elevated the use of literary humour in the American novel.

Acknowledgements 1. Backgrounds 2. Literary Comedy 3. Artemus Ward as a Pioneer Funnyman 4. The Social Ethics of a Comedian 5. Mark Twain the Development of a Literary Comedian 6. Toward the Novel 7. Humour and Social Criticism, The Gilded Age and The Prince and the Pauper 8. Adventures of Hucklebury Finn, the Literary Comedian Within the Novel 9. A Connecticut Yankee, a Culmination of American Literary Comedy 10. The American Claimant and Pudd’nhead Wilson 11. Conclusion Bibliography Index