Název: 'The subtleties of the American joke' : Mark Twain versus Europe
Zdrojový dokument: Brno studies in English. 2024, roč. 50, č. 1, s. 167-183
Rozsah
167-183
-
ISSN0524-6881 (print)1805-0867 (online)
Trvalý odkaz (DOI): https://doi.org/10.5817/BSE2024-1-10
Trvalý odkaz (handle): https://hdl.handle.net/11222.digilib/digilib.81081
Type: Článek
Jazyk
Licence: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International
Přístupová práva
otevřený přístup
Upozornění: Tyto citace jsou generovány automaticky. Nemusí být zcela správně podle citačních pravidel.
Abstrakt(y)
"Guides can not master the subtleties of the American joke," Mark Twain writes after he finishes a bout of stymying European efforts to teach culture to him and his comrades in The Innocents Abroad (293). The joke is double-barreled: Europeans do not realize the joke is on them for being stuck in their past and because Americans are not as dull-witted as they seem, but the joke is also of course on clueless traveling Americans, thrashing about Europe for cultural self-improvement. However, and mostly overlooked in previous analyses, there really is a "subtlety" to that multi-layered term "the American joke." Acknowledging earlier socio-historical analyses of Twain's confrontation between new and old worlds, as well as criticism problematizing the idea of authenticity in travel or implicating his book in Western imperialism, this paper instead explores via the lens of Menippean satire Twain's complex narrative construction of his "joke", which ultimately blends humor and horror.
Reference
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[16] Ward, Artemus (1867) Artemus Ward in London and Other Papers. New York: G. W. Carleton & Co. Publishers. Hathi Trust Digital Library, 2006. https://hdl.handle.net/2027/uc2.ark:/13960/t84j0k81v. Accessed on July 5, 2024.
[2] Bakhtin, Mikhail (1984a) [1963] Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics. Edited and translated by Caryl Emerson. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
[3] Bakhtin, Mikhail (1984b) [1965] Rabelais and His World. Translated by Helene Iswolsky. Bloomington: University of Indiana Press.
[4] Cox, James M. (2002, 1968) Mark Twain: The Fate of Humor. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press.
[5] Fiedler, Leslie (1966) Afterword. The Innocents Abroad, or The New Pilgrims' Progress. New York: New American Library.
[6] Kravitz, Bennett (1997) There's no place like home: 'geographies of the [American] mind' in the Innocents Abroad. American Studies International 35 (2), 52–76.
[7] Melton, Jeffrey Alan (1999) Keeping the faith in Mark Twain's 'The Innocents Abroad'. South Atlantic Review 64 (2), 58–80.
[8] Gribben, Allen, ed. (2009) "Portland woman bitter at Twain: humorist's satire on trip of Innocents Abroad still rankles with her." Mark Twain Journal 47 (1/2), 88–89.
[9] Railton, Stephen (2012a) Mark Twain in His Times. Selected pre-texts. University of Virginia Library. https://twain.lib.virginia.edu/innocent/iasrcshp.html. Accessed on July 4, 2024.
[10] Railton, Stephen (2012b) Mark Twain in His Times. Texts of 'Our Fellow Savages'. University of Virginia Library. https://twain.lib.virginia.edu/onstage/savtexts.html. Accessed on July 4, 2024.
[11] Rowlette, Robert (1973) Mark Ward on Artemus Twain': Twain's literary debt to Ward. American Literary Realism, 1870-1910 6 (1), 12–25.
[12] Shamir, Milette (2003) Foreigners within and Innocents Abroad: discourse of the self in the internationalization of American studies. Journal of American Studies 37 (3), 375–388.
[13] Smith, Henry Nash (1962) Mark Twain: The Development of a Writer. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
[14] Steinbrink, Jeffrey (1983) "Why the innocents went abroad: Mark Twain and American tourism in the late nineteenth century." American Literary Realism, 1870-1910 16 (2), 278–286.
[15] Twain, Mark (1997) The Innocents Abroad or The New Pilgrims' Progress. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
[16] Ward, Artemus (1867) Artemus Ward in London and Other Papers. New York: G. W. Carleton & Co. Publishers. Hathi Trust Digital Library, 2006. https://hdl.handle.net/2027/uc2.ark:/13960/t84j0k81v. Accessed on July 5, 2024.