1. Mark Twain

2. Important Points 1. Mark Twain’s Major Works
2. Characteristics of Twain’s Writings

3. Mark Twain his investments failed,
had to give lectures to pay off his debts,
his wife and two daughters died
tragic events in later life
grew up on the Mississippi River
at 12, father died, left school
gave him a wide knowledge of humanity
a printer's apprentice, a printer, a silver miner, a steamboat pilot and a frontier journalist

4. works “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County”
a frontier tale that makes nationally famous
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
two adventures book”
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn highly praised by Hemingway (“From which all modern American literature comes.“)

5. Samuel Clemens’ Major Works
The Gilded Age written in collaboration with Charles Dudley Warner
Life on the Mississippi

6. Samuel Clemens’ Major Works
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court　
The Man That Corrupted Hardleybug　
The Mysterious Stranger
Autobiography
These works contain bitter attacks on the human race

7. The Innocents Abroad
Roughing It
Pudd'nhead Wilson
The Prince and the Pauper
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court
American Claimant

8. Writing Features local colourism tall tales (highly exaggerated)
represented social life through portraits of local places which he knew best
drew from his own rich fund of knowledge of people and places
local colourism
tall tales (highly exaggerated)
a texture of most local color literature，a kink of humor

9. a master of language American dialect an American language
Mark Twain was the first truly American writer, and all of us since are his heirs, who descended from him."
he used colloquial language, vernacular language, dialects
a master of
language
short
concrete
direct in effect
American dialect
words
an American language
sentence & structures
simp1e, even ungrammatical

10. Mark Twain’s Writing Features
is of witty remarks mocking at small things and making people laugh
humor
is a kind of artistic style used to criticize the social injustice

11. The Adventures of Hucklberry Finn
commonly regarded as one of the Great American Novels, and is one of the first major American novels written in the vernacular, characterized by local color regionalism.
It is told in the first person by Huckleberry "Huck" Finn, best friend of Tom Sawyer and narrator of two other Twain novels.

12. It noted for its colorful description of people and places along the Mississippi River. By satirizing a Southern antebellum society that was already anachronistic at the time, the book is an often scathing look at entrenched attitudes, particularly racism. The drifting journey of Huck and his friend Jim, a runaway slave, down the Mississippi River on their raft may be one of the most enduring images of escape and freedom in all of American literature.

13. Major themes novel that embodies the search for freedom.
He wrote during the post-Civil War period when there was an intense white reaction against blacks. Twain took aim squarely against racial prejudice, increasing segregation, lynchings, and the generally accepted belief that blacks were sub-human. He "made it clear that Jim was good, deeply loving, human, and anxious for freedom."

14. Huck is in moral conflict with the received values of the society in which he lives, and while he is unable to consciously refute those values even in his thoughts, he makes a moral choice based on his own valuation of Jim's friendship and human worth, a decision in direct opposition to the things he has been taught.
a bildungsroman