内容説明
Mark Twain and the Art of the Tall Tale is a study of a peculiarly American comic strategy and its role in Mark Twain's fiction. Henry Wonham examines how Mark Twain used the oral genre of the tall tale to experiment with narrative structure throughout his career. Wonham argues that in his major fiction Twain manipulated conventional approaches to reading and writing by engaging his audience in a series of rhetorical games, whose rules he adapted from the conventions of tall tale performance and response. The book offers a history of the tall tale in American oral and written language, and shows how Twain's appropriation of the genre developed from the early works such as The Innocents Abroad through Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn, and Pudd'nhead Wilson.
Book Description
Mark Twain and the Art of the Tall Tale is a study of a peculiar American comic strategy and its role in Mark Twain's fiction. Focusing on the writer's experiments with narrative structure, Wonham describes how Twain manipulated conventional approaches to reading and writing by engaging his audience in a series of rhetorical games--the rules of which he adapted from the conventions of tall tale in American oral and written traditions. Wonham goes on to show how Twain's appropriation of the genre developed through the course of his career, from The Innocents Abroad to Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn, and Pudd'nhead Wilson. This eminently readable study will interest Twain enthusiasts and students of nineteenth-century American literature, as well as anyone interested in American humor and oral narrative traditions.
