可以表现马克土温的幽默的小故事或具体介绍他的作品哈克贝力费恩历险记的，用英语。越多越好，谢了
參考答案:Mark Twain: The Fate of Humor, by James M. Cox
(Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1966)
Reviewed by Kristin Brown
I think all of us would agree that Mark Twain's a pretty funny guy. James M. Cox wants to know what's really making us laugh.
Cox traces the development of Twain's humor and the forms it takes in his works, underscored by a pretty thorough biography. The events of Twain's real life take a back seat, however, to the actual humor of Mark Twain. Cox doesn't try to uncover what real-life events prompted a particular work; instead, he's interested in how Twain's humor evolves over time, and how it compliments the real-life experiences of Samuel Clemens.
Twain's humor first takes shape, according to Cox, while working as a newspaper correspondent. It's in this highly respectable and objective business that he learns the fine art of lying- or "burlesque", as Cox calls it. Of course, he doesn't really lie, but he does become prone to exaggeration and parody in his stories, and begins to find his personal voice in editorials. He discovers a feel for subtle mockery. It is here, Cox believes, that Twain discovers his unavoidable "true genius"- the humor which will come to define his success.
The laughter continues as Mark Twain starts to travel. As a professional traveler, his narrative becomes "a fusion of burlesque and mock innocence." The Innocents Abroad, as we know, is filled with anecdotes that all basically follow the same pattern- Mark Twain as the lovable yet mock-innocent fool, continually setting himself up by believing his own illusions. An example of this would be the disappointing Parisian shave that he survives, which crushes the dreams about Parisian barbers that he's had since early infancy; or even the continual humiliations of the steamboat apprentice in Old Times on the Mississippi. This persona is the Mark Twain that the world begins to laugh along with.
Twain also develops what Cox calls the "tall tale"- a humorous way of relaying stories of his travels as if they were myths, almost not to be believed. Twain does this most clearly in Roughing It, where his evidence for these stories is often that there isn't any evidence to disprove them. These exaggerated, mythological, "tall tales" are only fitting for Mark Twain, who is himself a kind of myth created by Samuel Clemens.
As time goes by and Twain moves from personal narrative to fiction, Cox notes that he "had to invent a character to take his place" in his work. That's where characters like Tom and Huck come in.
Twain's burlesque humor is still present, but it now comes from the childhood world of Tom and Huck. Twain himself gets to be a quiet, adult observer, while his characters provide the entertainment. Because the narrators are children, any "serious" issues are presented as play, and Twain can still mock the adult world through the eyes of these children.
Twain's humor at this time also rests on what Cox defines as "an inverted order of values"- the more Huckleberry Finn gets into trouble, or berates himself, the more the reader likes him and cheers him on. The stronger his "southern vernacular" language, the more it becomes a legitimate literary form. Essentially, the "worse" Huck, or Tom, is, the more we laugh.
But Twain's humorous success peaked with The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Before it's publication, Cox tells how Twain wrote and released The Prince and the Pauper with the encouragement of his serious side- his wife. Olivia Langhorne Clemmons acted as Twain's editor- and as an influence. As he noted in a letter, "I never wrote a serious word until after I married Mrs. Clemens." The Prince and the Pauper failed, according to Cox, simply because it wasn't funny, nor was it meant to be. Twain had attempted to suppress his genius.
This suppression continues with A Connecticut Yankee in King Author's Court, which, Cox asserts, is more of a political satire than a humorous story. While The Prince and the Pauper could be seen as a simple children's book, A Connecticut Yankee pleads to be liberal social commentary. It, like The Prince, was not well received, if nothing else because Mark Twain as a persona seemed lost amid the changing desires of Samuel Clemens.
This is where the life of Samuel Clemens seems to poke into the literature of Mark Twain. The second half of his career sees the release of Private History of the Campaign that Failed (a reflection on the Civil War- a touchy subject, perhaps at the time equivalent in sensitivity to our 9/11), and, later, Joan of Arc and The Mysterious Stranger, both of which are serious, religious, and rather un-Twain like. He released several other short works before the end of his life, few of which were very humorous. Not even Pudd'nhead Wilson, with it's forced plotline that Cox believes overshadows any potential for humor, resonated with readers the same way that his humorous works did. Any why should Samuel Clemens have been in a humorous mood, faced with bankruptcy, the death of a child, and his wife's terminal illness?
In the end, Cox shows us that Mark Twain, throughout his life and development, is the fate of humor. Cox declares, at one point, that Samuel Clemens doesn't have to be humorous, but Mark Twain does. Readers, ultimately, will respond the to persona that Clemens created in Mark Twain that makes them laugh. Cox believes that, in spite of his literary evolution, Twain cannot escape his fate as a humorist. Even Mark Twain himself knows this, as he wrote to his brother even before The Jumping Frog was published: "I have had a call to literature, of a low order- i.e. humorous. It is nothing to be proud of, but it is my strongest suit."
I, for one, am glad Mark Twain answered that call.
