Mark Twain's Pudd'nhead Wilson
Race, Conflict and Culture
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Mark Twain's Pudd'nhead Wilson
Race, Conflict and Culture
About This Book
This collection seeks to place Pudd'nhead Wilson âa neglected, textually fragmented work of Mark Twain'sâin 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
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Table of contents
- Contents
- Introduction
- Puddânhead Wilson Revisited
- The Sense of Disorder in Puddânhead Wilson
- Mark Twain and Homer Plessy
- Francis Galton and Mark Twain The Natal Autograph in Puddânhead Wilson
- âSure Identifiersâ Race, Science, and the Law in Puddânhead Wilson
- The Ties that Bind Race and Sex in Pudd'nhead Wilson
- Roxanaâs Plot
- Fatal Speculations Murder, Money, and Manners in Pudd'nhead Wilson
- âBy Right of the White Electionâ Political Theology and Theological Politics in Puddânhead Wilson
- Puddânhead Wilson on Democratic Governance
- âWhat did he reckon would become of the other half if he killed his half?â Doubled, Divided, and Crossed Selves in Puddânhead
- Some of the Ways of Freedom in Puddânhead Wilson
- Notes
- About the Contributors
- Index