Roughing It Under the Shadow of the Corporation
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 8895235 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Scott Michaelsen (corresponding author) |
| Year | 1995 |
| Volume | 25 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 101-128 |
| Publication date | 1995-12-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Canadian Review of American Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0007-7720 • E-ISSN: 1710-114X |
| Publisher | University of Toronto Press Inc. (UTPress) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.3138/cras-025-03-06 |
| OpenAlex | W2067282284 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 19 |
Introduction Mark Twain's Roughing It (1872) is, by most accounts, a sprawling, patched- together, decentered thing. But many commentators have unified the book by suggesting that it coheres around the difference between U. S. East and West—and therefore between genteel values and their attendant social limitations and demands, and the comparative openness and possibility of the frontier. The most influential reading of the text in this regard is Henry Nash Smith's (1957), which argues that the book is framed by the double- consciousness of the character "Mark Twain"—both a western "tenderfoot" and "old-timer." The latter, according to Smith, is a representative of "ver- nacular values" and the conditions of the wild West, including picturesque "color," "brotherhood," and "freedom." This figure exhibits traits of "laziness, irresponsibility, irreverence," and Smith concludes that the "western" Twain rejects such values by the end of the book, and substitutes American values of self-making which are inherently "urban," "industrial," and "capitalist" (226, 218, 225).1
Aesthetics · Antipathy · Archaeology · Art · Character (mathematics · Consciousness · Epistemology · Frontier · Laziness · Linguistics · Literature · Openness to experience · Political science · Politics · Psychoanalysis · Reading (process · Shadow (psychology · Sociology · American History and Culture · History · Law · Philosophy · Psychoanalysis, Philosophy, and Politics · Psychology · Social Psychology · Weber, Simmel, Sociological Theory
The fatal environment
The Reign of Wonder
Mark Twain
Mark Twain in Virginia City
From Fact to Fiction
Mark Twain
The Authentic Mark Twain
The Monomythic Structure of Roughing it
Realistic Style and the Problem of Context in "The Innocents Abroad" and "Roughing It
The Journals of Alfred Doten, 1849-1903
Nineteenth Century Travelers' Accounts of the Mediterranean Peasant
Introduction
Mark Twain and Southwestern Humor
Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism
The Narrative Construction of Reality
| Highly cited | No |
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