Heretical fictions [electronic resource] : religion in the literature of Mark Twain / Lawrence I. Berkove and Joseph Csicsila.

ISBN:

9781587299377

Title:

Author:

Berkove, Lawrence I.

Personal Author:

Berkove, Lawrence I.

Publication Information:

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xvi, 271 pages)

Contents:

Twain's countertheology : I have always preached -- Roughing it : the dream of the good life -- Adventures of Tom Sawyer : a company so small as to be hardly worth the saving -- Adventures of Huckleberry Finn : the hoax of freedom -- A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court : the eclipse of hope -- No. 44, the mysterious stranger : the false promise of the mind -- The last letters from Earth : between despair and compassion.

Local Note:

eBooks on EBSCOhost

Personal Subject:

Twain, Mark, 1835-1910-Religion.

Subject Term:

Religion in literature.

Added Author:

Csicsila, Joseph, 1968-

Format:

Electronic Resources

Electronic Access:

Click here to view

Publication Date:

2010

Publication Information:

Available:*

Shelf Number	Material Type	Copy	Shelf Location	Status
818.409 22	1:E-BOOK	1	1:ONLINE	Searching... Unknown

Bound With These Titles

On Order

Summary

Challenging the prevailing belief that Mark Twain's position on religion hovered somewhere between skepticism and outright heresy, Lawrence Berkove and Joseph Csicsila marshal biographical details of Twain's life alongside close readings of his work to explore the religious faith of America's most beloved writer and humorist. They conclude not only that religion was an important factor in Twain's life but also that the popular conception of Twain as agnostic, atheist, or apostate is simply wrong.

Heretical Fictions is the first full-length study to assess the importance of Twain's heretical Calvinism as the foundation of his major works, bringing to light important thematic ties that connect the author's early work to his high period and from there to his late work. Berkove and Csicsila set forth the main elements of Twain's "countertheological" interpretation of Calvinism and analyze in detail the way it shapes five of his major books-- Roughing It , The Adventures of Tom Sawyer , Adventures of Huckleberry Finn , A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court , and No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger --as well as some of his major short stories. The result is a ground-breaking and unconventional portrait of a seminal figure in American letters.

Author Notes

Lawrence I. Berkove is a professor emeritus of English at the University of Michigan-Dearborn. He is the editor of The Fighting Horse of the Stanislaus (Iowa), The Sagebrush Anthology: Literature from the Silver Age of the Old West , and The Best Short Stories of Mark Twain and coeditor of The Short Fiction of Ambrose Bierce, as well as numerous articles on Twain's major novels, short fiction, travel literature, religious values, and the Sagebrush School associates. Joseph Csicsila is a professor of English at Eastern Michigan University. He is the author of Canons by Consensus: Critical Trends and American Literature Anthologies , co-editor of Centenary Reflections on Mark Twain's No.44, The Mysterious Stranger , and of the Prentice Hall Anthology of American Literature, editor of The Gilded Age , and review editor of the Mark Twain Annual .