Where America Lies: Tradition and Transformation in Mark Twain’s Roughing It
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18485/bells.2016.8.14Keywords:
America, identity, nostalgia, salting, tradition, modernity, transformation, TwainAbstract
Twain is a chronicler of what he describes as an essentially wild West. Written a decade after the events, his textual transformation of a transforming territory is not devoid of nostalgia and Roughing It enters American literary tradition while at the same time, contributing by its innovations to the transformation of that society.
This paper starts by considering the humorous confrontation between tradition and modernity before analyzing the extent to which what was then called “salting” (lying) was a key ingredient in the transformation of the territory, as well as in the construction of the country’s identity and tradition. It eventually probes Twain’s essentially nostalgic outlook on the transformation of America.
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