Mark Twain 英语专业教学课件.pptVIP

The Mississippi River Half twain! Quarter twain! M-a-r-k twain!” For most people, the name Mark Twain is virtually synonymous with the life along the Mississippi River immortalized in the authors writing. Clemens first signed his writing with the name in February 1863, as a newspaper reporter in Nevada. Mark Twain (meaning Mark number two) was a Mississippi River term: the second mark on the line that measured depth signified two fathoms, or twelve feet—safe depth for the steamboat. In 1857, at the age of twenty-one, he became a cub steamboat pilot. The Civil War ended that career four years later by halting all river traffic. Although Clemens never again lived in the Mississippi valley, he returned to the river in his writing throughout his life. And he visited a number of times, most notably in 1882 as he prepared to write Life on the Mississippi, his fullest and most autobiographical account of the region and its inhabitants, and again in 1902 when he made his final visit to the scenes of his childhood. A Tramp Abroad (1880) The Prince and the Pauper (1882) The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson (1894) A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1889) The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg (1900) What Is Man? (1906) The Mysterious Stranger (1916) Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc (1896) Following the Equator (1897) The Adventure of Huckleberry Finn Setting: around 1850s, before the Civil War, a small town near the Mississippi. Plot: Theme: humanism will finally win Notice: this novel was the first famous novel about growing up and showing the contradictions between adults’ world and teenagers’ world. The novel used vivid details from actual life successfully. Special point of view: serious social problems discussed through the narration of a little illiterate boy. Colloquial style: a very important contribution of this novel to American literature. Features of ht language used in the novel: mostly Anglo-Saxon in origin, short, concrete and direct in