1、Mark Twain Samuel Langhorne Clemens (18351910),Mark Twain: (1835-1910) the father of American literature Samuel Langhorne Clemens,Two Fathoms deep the depth of water necessary for the steamer boats to pass safely,Sam Celmens as Mark Twain,Mark Twain, born in the Nevada Territory in 1863 of Sam Cleme

2、ns ambitions, nurtured by publishers, editors and other promoters, adopted by a grateful American public. Mark Twain became a kind of mythic hero in the United States.,Sam Celmens as Mark Twain,The emblem designed by Mark Twain, featuring all his initials as both Mark Twain and S L Clemens”,When he

3、signed his names in this overlapping fashion, he nearly always let Mark Twain cover S L Clemens.,Mark Twains Early Life,Born in a little town in Mississippi At 11, he lost his father At 13, he stopped schooling Once worked as A tramp printer A silver miner A steamboat pilot on the Mississippi A gold

4、-washer A frontier journalist Travel abroad,Gave him a wide knowledge Of humanity and society,First stage: active, lively,Second stage: acid, satirical,Mark Twains Later Life,Investment failed Had to give lectures to pay off his debts His wife and two daughters died,Twains view of the world became b

5、itter and bitter,Third stage: pessimistic and cynic,Mark Twain-Social background,The Civil War led many to question the assumptions shared by the Transcendentalists In post-bellum America, commerce took the lead in the national economy. The spirit of self-reliance that Emerson had preached became pe

6、rverted into admiration for driving ambition, a lust for money , power; and political corruption.,Mark Twain-Social background,The worth of the American dream, the idealized, romantic view of man and his life in the New World, began to lose its hold on the imagination of the people. Disillusionment

7、and frustration were widely felt. What had been expected to be a “Golden Age” turned out to be a “Gilded” one. By the 1870s, the age of Romanticism and Transcendentalism was by and large over.,His Major works,The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County (1865) 卡拉維拉斯縣馳名的跳蛙 Innocents Abroad (1869) 傻

8、子出國記 Roughing It (1872) 艱難歲月 The Gilded Age (with Charles Dudley waenner, 1873) 鍍金時代 The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) 湯姆索耶歷險記 The Prince and the Pauper (1882) 王子與貧民 Life on the Mississippi (1883) 密西西比河上的生活,His Major works,The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) 哈克貝利費恩歷險記 The Tragedy of Puddnhea

9、d Wilson (1894) 傻瓜威爾遜 A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthurs Court (1889) 亞瑟王朝廷里的康涅狄格州美國佬 The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg (1900) 敗壞了哈德萊堡的人 What Is Man? (1906) 人是什么 The Mysterious Stranger (1916) 神秘的陌生人 Following the Equator (1897) 赤道旅行記,His Major works,The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County

10、(1865) 卡拉維拉斯縣馳名的跳蛙 .,-It is a collection of short stories from oral tales, tall tales that he heard in the west.,colloquial style: in the general standard speech of the uneducated,His Major works,The Gilded Age (1873) 鍍金時代,-Written in collaboration with Charles Dudley Warner, the novel explored the

11、scrupulous individualism in a world of fantastic speculation and unstable values. The novel was an artistic failure, but it gives its name to the America of the corrupt post-Civil War period in which it attempted to satirize.,His Major works,Life on the Mississippi (1883) 密西西比河上的生活,- tells a story o

12、f his boyhood ambition to become a riverboat pilot.,His Major works,The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) 湯姆索耶歷險記,-a boy childhood with love, courage, responsibility, reflecting the independence of growth every boy may experience.,His Major works,The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) 哈克貝利費恩歷險記,-fa

13、thered Modern American literature -The book marks the climax of Twains literary creativity. It is considered as the best book that Twain ever produced. Hemingway once described the novel the one book from which all modern American literature comes.,Mark Twains Writing Features,Represented social lif

14、e through portraits of local places which he knew best,Drew from his own rich experiences of knowledge of people and places,Tall tales (highly exaggerated),Colloquialism： Words: short, concrete, direct in effect Sentence &structure: simple, eve ungrammatical American dialect,Mark Twains Writing Feat

15、ures,Humor /hyperbole A mockery at small things and making people laugh A kind of artistic style used to criticize social injustice,Mark Twains position,a real father of American literature H.L. Mencken,All modern American literature comes after his works Hemingway,In my opinion, Mark Twain was the first truly American writer, and all of us since are his heirs. William Faulkner,Marking Mark Twain,Unlike artists who at least affect in