El Humorismo: Mark Twain. Henry James Y El Cosmopolitanismo.

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Unit 54

EL HUMORISMO: MARK TWAIN. HENRY JAMES Y EL

COSMOPOLITANISMO.

______________________________________________________________________

1. The United States form 1861-1914

2. American Literature

3. Mark Twain (1835-1910)

 Humorism

 Life

 Style and main works

 Study of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

4. Henry James (1843-1916)

 Cosmopolitanism

 Life

 Style and main works

The International Phase

The Experimental Phase

The Major Phase

 Study of Daisy Miller

5. Educational Implications

6. Conclusion

7. Bibliography

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Unit 54

Even though Mark Twain and Henry James were two American writers

who lived during the same period and travelled a lot, they leaded utterly

different lives. Similarly, they wrote about different subject-matters because

they belong to different literary movements: humorism and cosmopolitanism.

Thus, in this unit we will analyse their historical and literary background of the

United States. Then, Twain and James’ movements, lives, style and major

works. We will study one of their most representative works. Finally, we will

give some ideas of how to bring this topic to an English classroom, a conclusion

and the bibliography used to develop this paper.

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Unit 54

The United States of America between 1861 (end of the Civil War) and

1914 (beginning of WWI) undertook great national prosperity. After the Civil

War, in 1865 America had to begin a new way of development which was

marked by the industrialization.

Although American history of this time has been deeply developed in

topic 52, I have summarised some points to provide a general overview of the

United States of America:

- Between the end of the Civil War and the beginning of the WWI

America was completely transformed.

- They changed from an essentially rural and agrarian country to an

industrialised society, as a world power.

- Industrialization, creation of transcontinental railroad lines, the

steamboat, big cities, national labour unions.

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Unit 54

In the literary field, the American literature of this period is known as

the American Renaissance. In this extraordinary moment, America found a

place of prestige in the literary universe. Indeed, the nineteenth century

witnessed the struggle of the American thought and arts to find a truly

American voice, far from the British models that had impregnated them.

In the words of R.W. Emerson: “We will walk on our own feet; we will

work with our own hands; we will speak our own minds...A nation of men will

for the first time exist, because each believes himself inspired by the Divine Soul

which also inspires all men”. (The American Scholar, 1837). Emerson’s claim

pointed in two parallel directions: on the one hand, the stress on the self-

sufficiency of the American nation; on the other, the relevance of the "I," the

individual. Thus, the "American Renaissance" saw a flowering of native ideas

and styles, regardless of sources. [topic 53]

This era is marked by the development of a national literature of great

abundance and variety. There were two fiction currents:

- Realism: depiction of daily life as it is.

- Naturalism: relate the work to the natural elements (Transcendentalism).

Two figures who dominated prose fiction in the last quarter of the 19 th century

were Mark Twain and Henry James.

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Unit 54

Samuel L. Clemens, best known under the pseudonym of Mark Twain, has

widely been famous by the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The

Adventures of Tow Sawyer, two classic novels of boyhood adventure.

Seriousness, however, is a quality manifested in his aesthetic achivements and,

paradoxically, also ingrained in the comic writing of this inveterate humorist.

Indeed, he was not amusing for the mere pleasure of joking, but was a master of

satire, a term which can be defined as the art of exposing folly or wickedness by

mocking them. He did not poke fun at trivialities, but resorted to humour in the

name of important values and for crucial purposes, in order to correct, censure

and ridicule the vices of society by making them the target of derision.

He started by specifically indulging in so-called ‘frontier humour’ or the

‘humour of the Southwest’ which was one of the most popular modes of

writings in America during the two decades preceding the Civil War. It arouse

from harsh conditions of frontier life, political controversy and oral story

telling.

Samuel L. Clemens grew up in Hannibal (Missouri), a small town on the

banks of the Mississippi River that would become the source of inspiration for

his fictionals St. Petersburg, where his two most memorable characters –Tom

Sawyer and Huck Finn –had their homes.

After several unsuccessful prospecting trips he joined the staff of the

Virginia City Territorial Enterprise as a local reporter. Writing for it, after

having used other pen-names, in 1863 he finally adopted the pseudonym of

‘Mark Twain’, a steamboat call which means ‘two fathoms deep’ (1.8 m) or ‘safe

water’. In other words it is the leadsman’s cry to the pilot to describe safe

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Unit 54

navigating conditions, for two fathoms of water are enough to avoid running

aground.

He began his new career as a humorous lecturer, first touring California,

later Nevada and then many other parts of the country as well, including New

York. In the last two decades of his life Clemens abandoned the cheerful mood

that had made his personality so appealing, and sank into despair. He had an

overwhelming sense of grief caused by the deaths of his son and two of his

daughters.

We should take into account that Mark Twain was an exponent of the

American Literary Realism, portraying the daily life of common people. In his

truthful rendering of reality, one of his main concerns was to record precisely

the way he heard ordinary people –both children and adults –talk.

He did not simply use slang and dialect words, but also strove to

reproduce in print the sounds as they were pronounced in order to suggest

authentic regional accents. His desire to create a distinct American language

based on the colloquial patterns of uneducated people should be analysed in

the context of a 19th-century American society who struggled for cultural

independence that began in the previous century. Twain was questioning the

authority of British traditions.

Among his main works, we include:

- “The Celebrating Jumping Frog of Calaveras County”

- Innocents Abroad

- The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

- Life on the Mississippi

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Unit 54

- The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

- A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

But his most famous work, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, has been

very controversial from the time of its appearance to the present. It was thought

to be vulgar, irreverent, trasky, vicious, rough, coarse and inelegant. Nowadays,

it is still one of the most challenged books in America. Whereas early reviewers

were particularly concerned with the effect of its violent scenes could have on

young people, more recent commentators generally raised charges of racism

because of the use of the word ‘nigger’. Mark Twain was absolutely against

slavery and wanted to demonstrate the harm that the institution had caused to

his country.

Although Huckleberry Finn expresses antislavery feelings, it is not an

antislavery novel in the sense that Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin had been, basically

because Twain published it after slavery had been abolished in the USA.

However, the novelist explored the antebellum South relying on his memories

of the boyhood he had spent in Hannibal.

Using that historical setting, Twain constructed a fictious plot about a

white boy and a runnaway slave –named Huck and Jim respectively –who drift

down the Mississippi river trying to get away from the ‘civilization’ that

oppresses them.

Huch as narrator uses the vocabulary and sintax of the uneducated son

of the town drunkard. The boy does not simply employ colloquial phrases and

slang or vulgar expressions, but also breaks grammatical rules. In the case of

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Unit 54

Jim, the author reflects a more difficult accent, a ‘negroe’ accent, mixed with a

friendly, amusing and cheerful tone.

This fiction work is a combination of picaresque adventure with witty

satire. Twain uses rhetoric devices such as irony, paradox, hyperbole, slang

expressions and funny situations.

Mark Twain aims a devestating criticism at the existing social order

about notions of morality. Thus, at the greatest moral climax of the book,

readers are made to feel that Huck is doing ‘right’ when he decides to do

‘wrong’ by not returning Jim to slavery, and expresses his determination to

commit what ‘civilized’ society labels as a ‘sin’, no matter what the

consequences of his choice might be: “All right then, I’ll go to hell”.

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Unit 54

Now, let examine James’ life, style and works.

Henry James is regarded not only as one of the America’s greatest

novelist, but also as a major British writer. There are strong reasons for arguing

that the writings of this genuinely cosmopolitan author belong to both literary

traditions at the same time.

On the one hand, he was born in New York City, spent part of his life in

his native land, and remained an American citizen until shortly before his

death.

On the other, he became an Englishman in 1915, having spent most of his

career in his beloved country of adoption. Apart from such biographical

circumstances, the basis for ascribing his work simultaneously to the history of

American literature adn that of English literature rests on the content of the

work itself and on its influence upon the development of modern fiction on

both sides of the Athlantic Ocean.

Henry James was born into a family notable for its intellectual

achievements. His father was an eccentric philosopher who held inconventional

ideas about education. His older brother, William, was one of the most

influential American philosopher of his time, especially in psychology.

Although Henry James later complained about the irregularity of his

schooling, in America and in Europe, his unusual secondary education brought

him into contact with a variety of instructional establishments and private

tutors in different places. Thanks to his upbringing, he acquired a cosmopolitan

outlook on life, an almost native fluency in French and a good command of

German and Italian.

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Unit 54

He spent his last four decades of his life in England, enjoying the

company of eminent intellectuals and artists.

This prolific and versatile man of letters provided his audience with

novels, tales, plays, biographies, memoires, travel sketches, essays and reviews.

James’s intricate style, which became increasingly complex throughout

his career, has attracted sophisticated readers, but has also discouraged mass

audiences, unable or unwilling to make the effort to interprete his dense and

sometimes even obscure prose.

Being convinced that fiction could be as aesthetically fulfilling as poetry,

James applies to his prose the kind of concentration and scrupulousness that is

commonly associated with the writing verse.

He almost exclusively wrote about the individuals he observed at close

hand in his own milieu, describing their elegant appearance and exquisite

manners. He was interested in exploring the complexities of human perception,

the refinements of sensibility, and the mental states of cultivated people, bound

by strict codes of behaviour.

Leon Edel divided James’s career into 3 phases:

- The International Theme Phase

- The Experimental Phase

- The Major Phase

The International Theme Phase

With his background, it was not surprising that the “international

theme” would become one of the greatest subjects of Jamesian fiction. He drew

on materials for creating characters from the observation of upper-middle and

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Unit 54

upper class tourists and expatriates he encountered, with the outstanding

accuracy that literary realism acquired. The international theme meant for him a

detailed exploration of the basic oppositions he found between America and

Europe.

Among his main works of this period we include:

- Roderick Hudson, an American artist who eargerly opened himself to

the European experience with fatal results.

- The American, opposition between an innocent young American man

and some evil Europeans.

- The Europeans, he reversed his typical narrative situation by taking

Europeans to America.

- Daisy Miller [afterwards examined in detail]

- Washington Square, set in N.Y. it is the story of a naive, dull, plain and

dutiful young woman’s vicitimization by a wealthy tyrannical father

and a fortune hunter.

- Portrait of a Lady, a young girl, Isabel Archer.

The Experimental Phase

He experimented with other themes and modes.

First, he wrote 3 long novels in the naturalistic mode:

- The Bostonians, a picture of American society through a group of

Bostonian women involved in the cause of feminism.

- The Princess of Casamassima, a revolutionary group in London.

- The Tragic Muse, the relationship of the artist to society.

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Unit 54

Second, he wrote drama for five years, but his seven plays, only two of

them being produced, failed completely.

Thirdly, he turned again to fiction, with a new turn, a complwx kind of

experimental writing. He assimilated techniques derived from the theatre and

proved the serious literary possibilities of a popular genre such as the ghost

story. Themes: threatened childhood in a corrupting adult world, the

psychology of supernatural phenomena, and the nature of success and failure

in literary life.

- The Turn of the Screw, a whole household is terrorized by ghosts.

- The Ivory Tower

- The Sense of the Past, two experimental unfinished novels.

The Major Phase

James wrote 3 very elaborated and polished late novels by an

increasingly baroque prose style, in which he again contrasted England with

America, the cosmopolitan subject-matter.

- The Wing of the Dove

- The Ambassadors

- The Golden Bowl

The three deal with James’s grand theme of freedom through perception:

only awareness of one’s own character and others’ provides the wisdom to live

as well.

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Unit 54

Now, let analyse in detail Daisy Miller.

James referred to Daisy Miller as a “nouvelle”. Modern critics have

classified it as a “novella”, which is in length neither a novel nor a short story,

but half-way between. In terms of structure, it is divided into foru chapters of

approximately equal length. Two of them are set in Switzerland in the summer,

whereas the other two take place in Rome during the winter.

This is one of the best James’s novels because of the freshness adn

vividness of the young James’s writing by presenting the text that his 19 th-

century readers enjoyed.

Newly abroad from an industrial town in the state of New York, Daisy

arrives in Europe ignoring class structures and conventionals codes of

behaviour.

Winterbourne is a limited narrator, as he is not the main character and

the author pretends to have limited knowledge of the characters’ thoughts.

His intention is to portray strict codes of behaviour and psychological

traits between American and European identity because he thought that human

behaviour was partially determined by the environment of each country (Daisy

and Winterbourne are both Americans but they were brought up in different

countries and continents).

Language changes depends on the characters: for instance, Winterbourne

uses a cultivated language; Daisy, an uncultivated; Randolph –Daisy’s brother –

a childish register; and the Guide, an ironical one.

Other subthemes that appear in the work are: family relationships,

children’s raising, and vicissitudes of courtship.

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Unit 54

How can we, as teachers, teach Twain’s and Henry’s literature to our

students?

Well, we can make a parallelism with transversal subjects such as

Spanish (picaresque novel), Valencian, and even, History (British Empire and

Spanish Empire and consequently their literature).

To encourage them to use the new technologies, such as the Internet,

DVD, e-books for learning English, we might also prepare a webquest on the

19th-century United States or abour these two writers’ biography.

To conclude, through this unit we have examined the historical and

literary backgroung in the last quarter of the 19 th century in the United States of

America. Then, we have reviewed the main representative authors of this

period: Samuel L. Clemens and Henry James, their lives, style, subject-matters,

main works and one of their main fiction work.

The bibliography used to develop this paper was:

American Literature to 1900, Teresa Gibert, Aceres, 2005.

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