Heretical Fictions: Religion in the Literature of Mark Twain
by LAWRENCE I. BERKOVE and Joseph Csicsila
University of Iowa Press, 2010 Paper: 978-1-58729-903-2 | eISBN: 978-1-58729-937-7 Library of Congress Classification PS1342.R4B47 2010 Dewey Decimal Classification 818.409
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
ABOUT THIS BOOK
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 BIOGRAPHY
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.
REVIEWS
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contents
Acknowledgments
Preface
1. Twain’s Countertheology - I Have Always Preached
2. Roughing It - The Dream of the Good Life
3. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer - A Company So Small as to Be Hardly Worth the Saving
4. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - The Hoax of Freedom
5. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court - The Eclipse of Hope
6. No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger - The False Promise of the Mind
7. The Last Letters from Earth - Between Despair and Compassion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
If you are a student who cannot use this book in printed form, BiblioVault may be able to supply you
with an electronic file for alternative access.
Please have the accessibility coordinator at your school fill out this form.
Heretical Fictions: Religion in the Literature of Mark Twain
by LAWRENCE I. BERKOVE and Joseph Csicsila
University of Iowa Press, 2010 Paper: 978-1-58729-903-2 eISBN: 978-1-58729-937-7
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 BIOGRAPHY
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.
REVIEWS
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Normal.dotm 0 0 1 192 1099 The University of Iowa 9 2 1349 12.0 0 false 18 pt 18 pt 0 0 false false false /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} “An important contribution to Twain studies, Heretical Fictions offers a provocative argument for the centrality of Calvinist religious thought in Twain's works that will surely spark significant debate. While readers may balk at some of their conclusions, Berkove and Csicsila offer close readings of Twain's major fiction that overall mount a formidable and compelling case for the pervasiveness of his struggles with—and against—the implications of a Calvinist worldview. Their reading reveals a coherent thematic structure that undergirds some of Twain's most apparently episodic major fiction, but more importantly, it offers an intriguing explanation for many of Twain's apparently contradictory stances during his lifetime. At its strongest, this book explores the serious moral inquiry beneath the surface of much of Twain's humor, arguing that Twain used fiction to test the emerging social and intellectual movements of his day against the Calvinist worldview, (sometimes desperately) seeking viable alternatives. Heretical Fictions argues cogently that the apparent pessimism of Twain's last ten years was not the morbid preoccupation of an aging and embittered man, but the compassionate culmination of a lifelong quest to test the reluctant conclusions of a ‘God-haunted mind.’”— Sharon D. McCoy, University of Georgia
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contents
Acknowledgments
Preface
1. Twain’s Countertheology - I Have Always Preached
2. Roughing It - The Dream of the Good Life
3. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer - A Company So Small as to Be Hardly Worth the Saving
4. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - The Hoax of Freedom
5. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court - The Eclipse of Hope
6. No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger - The False Promise of the Mind
7. The Last Letters from Earth - Between Despair and Compassion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
If you are a student who cannot use this book in printed form, BiblioVault may be able to supply you
with an electronic file for alternative access.
Please have the accessibility coordinator at your school fill out this form.
It can take 2-3 weeks for requests to be filled.
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE