Mark Twain's Response to the Native American
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 7621960 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Helen L Harris (corresponding author) |
| Year | 1975 |
| Volume | 46 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 495 |
| Publication date | 1975-01-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | American Literature (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0002-9831 • E-ISSN: 1527-2117 |
| Publisher | JSTOR (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/2924574 |
| OpenAlex | W2332813279 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 6 |
ARK TWAIN HAS BEEN called the champion of the oppressed,' IVJL but when he wrote of the Native American he was unfailingly hostile. Some Twain scholars, reluctant to accept Maxwell Geismar's conclusion that Twain's writings reflected hatred of the Indian,2 have cited instances of Twain's sympathetic response to Indians and concluded that although during his Western years he seemed prejudiced against Indians his attitude eventually changed.3 To be sure, Lewis Leary raised a valid consideration when he expressed concern that sustained focus on Twain's social reform efforts would diminish his image and detract attention from his literary artistry.' However, if Twain's work is worthy of analysis, both as a complex individual's artistic expression and as literature reflecting nineteenth-century American culture and literary taste-for Twain was a popular writer-then his response to the Indian, usually treated as a taboo subject or ignored, demands investigation. To oversimplify Twain's response to the Native American tribes and their struggle to survive as a free people may be to ignore the relationship between Twain's literary insistence on the inferiority of the Indian and the nation's need to mythologize extermination of the natives and seizure of their homelands as an admirable part of the pioneer struggle. Although the Native American was a frequent subject of Twain's writing, analysis of Twain's portrayal of him is usually limited to Injun Joe's mythic role or Cooper's influence on Twain's portrayal of the Indian.5 Long before Twain, the Indian had been stereotyped
American Literature and Humor Studies · American Sports and Literature · History · Modern American Literature Studies
| Citations per year | 0.2 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 1996 - 2020 (25) |
| Highly cited | No |