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Mark Twain & France

The Making of a New American Identity

Paula Harrington, Ronald Jenn

Mark Twain & France

244 pages

Published: July 2017

12 illus.

ISBN: 9780826273772

Mark Twain and His Circle

Formats:

Digital download
Hardcover

Price: $55.00

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About This Book
Blending cultural history, biography, and literary criticism, this book explores how one of America's greatest icons used the French to help build a new sense of what it is to be “American” in the second half of the nineteenth century.

While critics have generally dismissed Mark Twain’s relationship with France as hostile, Harrington and Jenn see Twain’s use of the French as a foil to help construct his identity as “the representative American.” Examining new materials that detail his Montmatre study, the carte de visite album, and a chronology of his visits to France, the book offers close readings of writings that have been largely ignored, such as The Innocents Adrift manuscript and the unpublished chapters of A Tramp Abroad, combining literary analysis, socio-historical context and biographical research.
Authors and Editors
Paula Harrington is director of the Farnham Writers’ Center and an assistant professor of writing at Colby College. In 2013, she was a Fulbright Scholar in Paris, doing research that led to her collaboration with Jenn on this book. She lives in Portland, ME.

Ronald Jenn is a professor at Université de Lille, France. He is the author of La Pseudo-traduction, de Cervantès à Mark Twain. He lives in Lille, France.
Praise For This Book
“Alternately takes up panoramic historical and cultural vistas and carefully analyzes passages from all sorts of text with judgment and a sense of proportion.”—Tom Quirk, University of Missouri, author of Mark Twain and Human Nature
“The authors work seamlessly back and forth between historical data, biographical detail, and attention to multiple works by Twain that illuminate his complex relationship to the French and to France.”—Linda A. Morris, University of California, author of Gender Play in Mark Twain: Cross-Dressing and Transgression
“The layers of Mark Twain's protean life and ideas seem infinite and infinitely rich, especially when peeled back by such scrupulous scholars as Paula Harrington and Ronald Jenn. This fascinating, well written summa of his thoughts about the French people, their culture, and their politics—for decades regarded by most of us as merely part of his comic repertoire—reveal them in all their depth and complexity.”—Ron Powers, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, author of Mark Twain: A Life
“The resources utilized are impressive and indicate Harrington and Jenn left few stones unturned. Their writing style is direct and to the point. Their arguments that the French served Mark Twain as a foil to advance American culture and his own reputation as a distinctly American writer are strong and likely to convince future scholars for years to come.”—Mark Twain Forum

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