Forrest G. Robinson

Mark Twain’s Pudd’nhead Wilson: Race, Conflict and Culture

This collection seeks to place Pudd’nhead Wilson —a neglected, textually fragmented work of Mark Twain’s—in the context of contemporary critical approaches to literary studies. The editors’ introduction argues the virtues of using Pudd’nhead Wilson as a teaching text, a case study in many of the issues presently occupying literary criticism: issues of history and the uses of history, of canon formation, of textual problematics, and finally of race, class, and gender. In a variety of ways the essays build arguments out of, not in spite of, the anomalies, inconsistencies, and dead ends in the text itself. Such wrinkles and gaps, the authors find, are the symptoms of an inconclusive, even evasive, but culturally illuminating struggle to confront and resolve difficult questions bearing on race and sex. Such fresh, intellectually enriching perspectives on the novel arise directly from the broad-based interdisciplinary foundations provided by the participating scholars. Drawing on a wide variety of critical methodologies, the essays place the novel in ways that illuminate the world in which it was produced and that further promise to stimulate further study. Contributors. Michael Cowan, James M. Cox, Susan Gillman, Myra Jehlen, Wilson Carey McWilliams, George E. Marcus, Carolyn Porter, Forrest Robinson, Michael Rogin, John Carlos Rowe, John Schaar, Eric Sundquist

The Cambridge companion to Mark Twain

Preface Chronology of Mark Twains life 1. Mark Twain as an American icon Louis J. Budd 2. The innocent at large: Mark Twains travel writing Forrest G. Robinson 3. Mark Twain and women Shelley Fisher Fishkin 4. Mark Twains civil war: humors reconstructive writing Neil Schmitz 5. Banned in Concord: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and classic American literature Myra Jehlen 6. Black critics and Mark Twain D. L. Smith 7. Mr Clemens and Jim Crow: Twain race and blackface Eric Lott 8. Speech acts and social action: Mark Twain and the politics of literary performance Evan Carton 9. How the boss played the game: Twains critique of imperialism in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthurs Court John Carlos Rowe 10. Mark Twains travels in the racial occult: Following the Equator and the dream tales Susan Gillman 11. Mark Twains theology: the Gods of a Brevet presterian Stanley Brodwin Further reading Index.

An "Unconscious and Profitable Cerebration": Mark Twain and Literary Intentionality

Scholars have been guilty of assuming that Mark Twain was fully self-conscious in his literary intentions. The liabilities entailed by this assumption are manifest in Henry B. Wonham9s recent Mark Twain and the Art of the Tall Tale. A survey of the evidence bearing on this pivotal question reveals that Mark Twain was an artist of decidedly inchoate intentions, and that he was perfectly willing to admit it. Thus the burden of proof in this matter rests most heavily on those who want to characterize Mark Twain as a highly self-conscious writer.

Patterns of Consciousness in The Innocents Abroad

CRITICAL commentary on The Innocents Abroad has been virtually uniform in its detection of a bold pattern of opposition in the voice of the narrator, Mark Twain. The elements to be found at the poles of opposition vary from one scholarly account to the next, as do assessments of Mark Twains success in dealing with the tensions that at once grow out of and inform his narrative. In what follows I will review the major features of this biformal pattern, noting their general conformity to a dominant structure and highlighting the dizzying pace of mental movement between extremes. This discussion opens the way to fresh perspectives on Mark Twains consciousness as it manifests itself in his first booklength narrative.

Clio Bereft of Calliope: Literature and the New Western History

I suppose . . . that the root ofmy uneasiness with the Western revisionism generally is that the revisionists would like us to believe that they were more or less the first to notice, or at least to emphasize, how violent, how terrible, and how hard winning the West actually was. My own reading, as well as my boyhood among the old-timers, leads me to exactly the opposite conclusion: everyone noticed how hard it was. Larry McMurtry2

Josiah Royce's California

Josiah Royce is a precious regional treasure. He is precious in part because he was a raw provincial from Grass Valley, California, whose prodigious intellect carried him to a prominent place at Harvard University during the “golden age” o f Am erican philosophy. Royce was first and foremost a philosopher and will undoubtedly continue to be revered for his contributions to that field o f inquiry. But in a regional perspective he is precious in perhaps even greater part because o f his bold and principled resistance to the triumphalist strain in Am erican historiography. His California: From the Conquest in 1846 to the Second Vigilance Committee in San Francisco (1886) anticipates by almost a cen-

Introduction: Rethinking California

Scholarly writing on California has increased dramatically since around 1990. Histories of understudied racial and ethnic groups have been especially numerous. There has also been considerable attention to Los Angeles, to popular culture and the arts, and, in lesser degrees, to the Gold Rush, to San Diego, and to the states problems with water. Specialized academic writing has been accompanied by the work of more popular generalists. Finally, recent historians have emphasized lines of continuity between past and present, with a special eye to the vexed topic of immigration.

An interview with Kevin Starr

Kevin Starr responds to interview questions about the influence of San Francisco on his writing, the future of California, recent trends in American historiography, the competing demands of the public and private sectors, and likely developments in the re-thinking of Californias past.