英语专业论文：马克吐温的写作风格（上）
2008-12-26 16:53阅读：
英语专业论文：马克吐温的写作风格（上）
An Analysis of the Writing Styles of Mark
Twain
His colloquial Language and Satire in the Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn
I. The Background of Mark Twain
1.1 Mark Twain and His Experience
Mark Twain, pseudorym of Samuel langhone Clemens, was brought up in
the town of Hannibal, Missouri, near the Mississippi River. He was
twelve when his father diod and he had to leave school. He was
successively a printer’s apprentice, a tramp printer, a silver
miner, a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi, and a frontier
journalist in Nevada and California. This knocking about gave him a
wide knowledge of humanity. As one of America’s first and foremost
realists and humorists, Mark Twain usually wrote about his own
personal experiences and things he knew about from firsthand
experience. His life spanned the two Americas, the frontier America
and the emerging
urban, industrial giant of the twenty-century.
As a witness of the civil war, Twain saw clearly the great changes
in nation’s economic development and political life. With the final
victory over the South the North once again enjoyed its wielding
power in the nation’s administration. Now the acute conflict at
home was undermined and the American people again focused their
full attention on re-construction after the war. Because most
majority of the slaves were emancipated, the slave-based economy of
the defeated South had its prosperity became rootless. In this
case, clusters of groundless southern poor whites and the newly
freed slaves headed directly of indirectly for the new-liberated
cities to seek opportunities. It may be called the ‘Gold Rush’
rejuvenated, or rather, it was so-called the ‘American Dream’ by
some critics. Twain also could not help rushing to the west to will
his American dream. He once believed the idea of development and
industrialization since it would modernize the young country and
encourage the enterprising spirit of the American who had long been
famous for it. He was firmly enthralled by such fever, so once
again he held an optimistic attitude towards the post-westward
expansion. He drew much inspiration from the unparalleled and
magnificent event and spoke highly of its decision-makers and its
people.
1.2 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
The best work that Mark Twain ever produced is, as we noted earlier
on, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. It tells a story
about the United States before the Civil War, around 1850, when the
great Mississippi Valley was still being settled. Here lies an
America, with its great national faults, full of violence and even
cruelty, yet still retaining the virtues of ‘some simplicity, some
innocence, and some peace.’ The story takes place along the
Mississippi River, on both sides of which there was unpopulated
wilderness and a dense forest. It relates the story of the escape
of Jim from slavery and, more important, how Huck Finn, floating
along with him and helping him as best he could, changes his mind,
his prejudice about black people, and comes to accept Jim as a man
and as a close friend as well.
At the heart of Twain’s achievement is his creation of Huck Finn,
who embodies that mythic America, midway between the wilderness and
the modern super state.
1.3 A General Introduction to the Mississippi
The Mississippi is not only Mark Twain’s life stage but also
American society’s stage. It flows through the middle of America;
it’s one of the greatest rivers in the world. In Twain’s early
years, the geographic core was the great valley of the Mississippi
River, and the Mississippi is the main artery of transportation on
the young nation’s heart. In 1857, young Mark Twain entered that
world as a cub pilot on a steamboat. Later, when he wented to write
something, this land provided him with many plentiful writing
materials.
II. Analyzing Two Writing Styles of Mark Twain (in the
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn)
Mark Twain was the first important writer to consistently use the
American speech rather than England’s English. His honor, whether
it was aimed at pure entertainment or at social satire, was
irresistible. His realism, and details influenced many later
American novelists. That was why Ernest Hemingway once said “all
modern American literatures came from one book written by Mark
Twain called The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.” And it
became Twain’s masterpiece. Mark Twain’s three years’ life on that
returned to the Mississippi left such a fond memory with him that
returned to the theme more than once in his writing career.
Huckleberry Finn is a veritable recreation of living models, and is
Huck’s book, not Jim’s. The two major characters, Huck and Jim,
represent the two sides of the dilemma: Huck strikes out for an
absolute freedom, while Jim requires, in order to gain his own
freedom, that Huck qualify his freedom by entering into the pursuit
of Jim’s. It starts out as a comedy , an ‘As You Like It’ with a
hero drawn from the bottom of society rather than the top. Huck and
his father, Jim, the swindlers(the Duke and the Dauphin), colonel
sherburn and the drunkard Boggy-all these characters prototypes in
real life. The portrayal of individual incidents and characters
achieved intense verisimilitude of detail. Serious problems are
being discussed through the narration of a little illiterate boy.
The fact that the wilderness juxtaposed with civilization, the
people half wild and half civilized, many of whom are worse,
vulgar, are brutal. As for the style of the book, the form is based
on the simplest of all novel-forms, the so-called picaresque novel,
or novel of the road, which strings its incidents on the line of
the hero’s travels. But, in this novel, rivers are roads that move,
and the movement of the road in its own mysterious life transmutes
the primitive simplicity of the from: the road itself is the
greatest character in this novel of the road, and the hero’s
departures from the river and his returns to it compose a subtle
and significant pattern. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
shows us the major achievements of his art: the masterful use of
dialects; humor and pathos, innocence and evil. This novel
demonstrates his ability to capture the enduring, archetypal,
mythic images of America and to create the most memorable
characters in all of American fiction.
2.1 Use of Colloquial Language
The book is written in a colloquial style, in the general standard
speech of uneducated Americans. Moreover, the prose of Huckleberry
Finn established the prose virtues of American colloquial speech.
It has something to do with ease and freedom in the use of
language. Most of all, it has to do with the structure of the
sentence, which is simple, direct, and fluent, maintaining the
rhythm of the word’s group of speech and the intonations of the
speaking voice. Mark Twain’s colloquial style has influenced a
large number of American writers.
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn displays the major
achievements of his art: the carefully controlled point of view,
with its implicit ironies expressed through the voice of a
semiliterate boy: the masterful use of dialects: the felicitous
balancing of nostalgic humorist and realism, humor and pathos,
innocence and evil, all united for a journey down the Mississippi
that serves as the mythic center of the novel. This novel
demonstrates his ability to capture the enduring, archetypal,
mythic images of America and to create the most memorable
characters in all of American fiction.
2.1.1 Vernacular Language
Mark Twain wrote in his unpretentious, colloquial, and poetic
style. He used vernacular language, dialect with spelling
representing pronunciation. Part of this comes from his interest in
humor. The directness of the language is a very influential point
in Twain’s style. Ernest Hemingway in the 20th century
said that he had learnt his craft from Mark Twain because if the
direct speech and the direct narration that Twain was able to
achieve. The hoax and tall tale are also part of twain’s style.
Hoax is writing something fantastic and pretending that it were
true, much like the tall tale. It tolls as if it were true, and so
the reader would laugh that any body could believe such
preposterous things, the burlesque making fun of establishes ways
of writing.
Mark Twain said, “I amend dialect stuff by talking and talking it
till it sounds right.” He wanted his writing to have the sound of
easy-going speech. In Huckleberry Finn the fountainhead of the
American colloquial prose, he wrote seven different dialects and
each can be distinguished. If the reader is a linguist, he can
examine the different pronunciations that Twain has shown. In his
own time, dialect writing was considered humorous. People got a big
laugh out of reading these misspell words. Another feature of the
book, which helps to make it famous is its language. The book is
written in the colloquial style in the general standard speech of
uneducated Americans.. Mark Twain’s introductory note on accents is
an indication of his conscious attempt to achieve accurate detail.
“In this book,” he says, “a number of dialects are used, to wit:
the Missouri Negro dialect; the extreme forms of the backwoods
southwestern dialect; the ordinary ‘pike country’ dialect; and four
modified varieties of this last. The shadings have not been done in
a haphazard fashion, or by guesswork; but painstakingly, and with
the trustworthy guidance and support of personal familiarity, with
these several forms of speech.” “Painstaking ” and “not haphazard,”
though they possess a humorous ring, denote the conscientious
effort on the part of the author, and trustworthiness and
familiarity and the author’s awareness of dialects in using which
reveal his attempt to reproduce actual daily speech with a degree
of accuracy. A recent and very influential recasting of Huck’s
vernacular voice has identified.
We may quote a passage from this masterpiece as an
illustration:
“I took the sack of corn meal and took it to where the canoe was
hid, and shoved the vines and branches apart and put it in; then I
done the same with the side of bacon; then the whisky-jug. I took
all the coffee and sugar there was, and all the ammunition; I took
the wadding; I took the bucket and gourd; took a dipper and a tin
cup, and my old son and two blankets, and the skillet and the
coffee-pot/ I took fish lines and matches and other things-
everything that was worth a cent. I cleaned out the place I wanted
an ax, but there wasn’t any, only the one out at woodpile, and I
know why I was going to leave that. I fetched out the gun, and now
I was done.”
The words used here are, perhaps “ammunition” which is
etymologically French, mostly Anglo-Saxon in origin, and are short,
concrete and direct in effect. Sentence structures are most of them
simple or compound, with a series of “then” and “ands” and
semi-colons serving as connectives. The repetition of the word
“took” and the stringing together of things leave the impression
that Mark Twain depend solely on the concrete object and action for
the body and movement of his prose. What is more, there is an
ungrammatical element, which gives the final finish to his style.
The whole book approximates the actual speech habit of an
uneducated boy from south American of the mid-nineteenth
century.
The vernacular language in the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
initiated the new style of language in American novels, and has had
significant influence upon American writers of later
generations.
2.1.2 Local Color
Local color as a trend first made its presence in the late 1860s
and early seventies. The vogue of local color fiction was, the
logical combination of a long, progressive development. It was the
outgrowth of historical and aesthetic forces that been gathering
energy since early nineteenth century. Twain refers to the
elements, which characterize a local culture, elements such as
speech, customs, and also a particular place. Local colorists
concerned themselves with presenting and interpreting the local
character of their regions. They tended to identify and glorify,
but they never forgot to keep an eye on the truthful color of local
life.
Twain depicted social life through descriptions of local places and
people he knew best and believed that “the most valuable capital,
or culture, or education usable in the building of novels is
personal experience.” Yet, sometimes Twain wrote a sentimental
story, not because he was sentimental, but because he wanted to
show the reader how stupid such a story really was. The reader has
to be very careful when he or she reads Mark Twain. Twain often
played trick on the reader. He often said things when he meant just
the opposite. This is the irony that he got the humor from the Far
West. He would do things that he did just to make fun , but
the reader might think that he really meant it. Then the reader was
the tender-foot who taken in .
Mark twain preferred to respect social life through portraits of
local places which he knew best and drew heavily from his own rich
fund of knowledge of people and places. The Adventures of
huckleberry Finn is one such example. Finn is living breathing
personality. It is through his use of language and his activities
that Twain creates character and sets down objective truth: Finn is
uneducated; he dislikes civilized ways because they are restrictive
and hypocritical he likes.
Meanwhile, local color mixed romantic plots with realistic
descriptions of things which were readily observed, with the
customs , dialects, sights, smell and sounds of regional America.
After the Civil war, local color had further developed, In this
book, this kind of literature mainly describes the local life, the
keynote was optimistic, and the language was narrative humorous.
The characters he created were humorous and full of wittiness. Mark
Twin’s work was regarded the witness of America’s pure local life.
According to Calkins, “Few American writers have written the same
after reading telling.” From my point of view, American literature
is so charming for this kind of works.
Local color became dominate in American Literature(1860-1870). One
of the most important writing features of Mark Twain is the use of
Local colorism. It is also impossible in the Mississippi River
towns through which Huck and Jim journey to imagine being a hero
.This in turn makes Sherborn a cold-blooded killer and Huck a saint
(and Tom a good). Let me repeat it as a saint，however, Huck is no
more bent on social reform, no more optimistic about it, than is
sherburn. So local colorism is a variation of American realism, and
also a description of a small refined region. Twain, breaking out
of the narrow limits of local-color fiction, described the breadth
of American experience as no one had ever done before, or since,
and he created The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, a
masterpiece of American realism that proverbs to be one of the
great books of world literature.
2.1.3 Pun
In English paronomasia called pun, means call by a different name.
The exact definition is: Humorous use of word to suggest different
meanings, or of words of same or similar sound has different
meanings. There are five forms of pun: homophonic pun, paranomasic,
antalaclasis, sylletic pun, asteismus. In a certain context, pun
has several pragmatic functions. Throughout all of Twain’s writing,
we see the conflict between the ideals of Americans and their
desire for money. But Twain never tried to solve the conflict. He
is like a newspaperman who reports what he sees. In this situation,
his humor was often rather childish. This may bespeak why the
critic P. Abel said:” Twain was a boy and an old man, but never was
he a man.”
In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, we can find
many words and phrases that were used vividly to describe the
things that happened, such as ‘I went along slow then, and I wasn’t
right down certain whether I was glad I started or whether I
wasn’t. This sentence is very interesting; pun is used to express
the author’s mood at that moment. We can also use another kind of
language to replace the original, but the effect is so different.
So we can conclude that pun played an important role in this
novel.
