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The Place of Folklore in the Creative Art of Mark Twain

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The Place of Folklore in the Creative Art of Mark Twain THE PLACE OF FOLKLORE IN THE CREATIVE ART OF MARK TWAIN ItY RAY WILLIAM FRANTZ, JR. A.B., University of Nebraska, 1948 M.S., University of Illinois, 1949 A.M., University of Illinois, 1951 THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN ENGLISH IN THE GRADUATE COLLEGE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS, 1955 URBANA, ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS THE GRADUATE COLLEGE _Nov.embeE__29j_.195^ - 1 HEREBY RECOMMEND THAT THE THESIS PREPARED UNDER MY SUPERVISION BY. _Bayi William Erantz,_„Jr_. ENTITLED The. Place_of Pp_lJclore__ln_tbe_„CrjaatJjLe_.Arjb_ _of_MarkJFw.aln- BE ACCEPTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF_ Do.oJbo.r_.of_JPiiilas.Qpiiy__irL_Engliati.. ~V*T\N-V.— ^v , Head of Department Recommendation concurred inf Committee on €± C-WMs Final Examinalionf If t Required for doctor's degree but not for master's. 5M—I-5-I—5IW iii Table of Contents Page Preface iv Chapters I. Folklore Influences on the Life of Mark Twain......'.. 1 II. The Travel Books 39 III. The Gilded Age and the Historical Novels 102 IV. The Mysterious Stranger, Pudd'nhead Wilson, and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer 147 V. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn 197 Conclusion. • 243 Bibliography •. 246 iv Preface This study was prompted by a lifelong interest in the writings of Mark Twain and, more specifically, by the discovery that little critical attention has been directed toward Twain's use of folk­ lore. Although the folklore of "The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras' County" is well known, Twain's use of such tall tales and other types of lore in his writing has gone virtually unno­ ticed. Only Victor R. West and Bernard DeVoto have given any con­ centrated attention to this aspect of his work. Twain employed folk materials extensively throughout his writings, often achieving through them effects so. skillfully suited to his material that they widen the dimension of his art. This thesis is an attempt to show the extent of folklore usage in each of his principal books and to evaluate what folklore contributes to each work. A knowledge of the organization of this study will make clear­ er the significance of the findings. The development depends upon neither a chronological nor a subject arrangement. A chronological ordering was not feasible because this would have meant imposing an order upon writings which quite naturally fall into three principal divisions of their own: the travel books, the historical novels, and those books conceived in the spirit of the Hannibal period. A subject division was discarded so that this examination could show I more clearly what folklore contributes to each work as a whole within each group. The arrangement, then, is by group types. This! arrangement is particularly valuable because a definite pattern can be seen in each group. For example, one group may, for certain reasons, illustrate a generally inept handling of folk materials, whereas another group, for quite different reasons, may reveal folk materials being employed with exceptional artistry. Upon these dis­ tinctions the final verdict regarding the place of folklore in Twain's creative art depends. I wish to express here my sincere gratitude for the understand­ ing and guidance which Professor John T. Flanagan has given me in the preparation of this study and to acknowledge the helpfulness of the library staff of the University of Illinoiso Table of Contents Pag Chapters I. Folklore Influences on the Life of Mark Twain 1 II. The Travel Books 39 III. The Gilded Age and the Historical Novels 102 IV. The Mysterious Stranger, Pudd'nhead Wilson, and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer 147 V. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn 197 Conclusion 243 Bibliography 246 Chapter I Folklore Influences on the Life of Mark Twain Mark Twain was born in a two-room shack in the village of Flor­ ida, Missouri, in 1#35. The visitor to Florida today may still see the gray hull of this shack with its sway-backed roof and warped clapboards which show the deterioration of more than a century. Florida, too, is a hull of its former self, little more than a side- road ghost town. A sagging store slowly decaying behind a gas pump at the village intersection supplies the few citizens who remain. The Florida of 1#34, to which the Clemens family came from Tennes­ see, was an energetic village grown to approximately one hundred 1 citizens who shared the spirit of opportunity engendered by the frontier and looked forward to a prosperous future. The houses on the two dusty streets were either frame or log; a church of logs 2 rose near-by; and two grist mills and a saw mill marked the town's j 3 i beginning industry. By 1#37, Florida had a hemp manufacturing 4 5 firm and four or five distilleries. The Salt River, angling Mark Twain, Mark Twain's Autobiography, ed. Albert B. Paine (New York, 1924), I, 95. 2 Dixon Wecter, Sam Clemens of Hannibal (Boston, 1952), p. 41. 3 Minnie M. Brashear, Mark Twain, Son of Missouri (Chapel Hill, 1934), P. 49. ^ Alphonso Wetmore, Gazetteer of the State of Missouri (St. Louis, 1337), P- 121» 5 Brashear, p. 49. eastward eighty-five miles to the river, was Florida's hope; for everyone believed that Salt River would eventually be deepened, thus allowing direct commerce with the Mississippi River. The be­ lief in slave economy also gave comfort to this hope. The propor- tion of slaves in the county was high. Twain's uncle, John Quarles, who lived on a farm four miles from Florida, owned thirty 7 slaves. The Salt River was never deepened, however, and the young town was doomed to fall to pieces on the river banks. During the autumn of 1839, the Clemenses set out for Hannibal to try new for- \\ tunes. Compared to Florida, Hannibal was a thriving city. Located on the Mississippi, it was an important river port and carried on di- rect trade with St. Joseph, the gateway to the Great West.8 In 1839, Hannibal had about 450 people. Within the next ten years this figure had risen to one thousand, and the town boasted "two pork houses...four general stores, three sawmills, two planing mills, three blacksmith shops, two hotels, three saloons, two churches, two schools, a tobacco factory, a hemp factory, and a tanyard, as The I83O Census shows that Ralls County, in which Florida was situated at that time, had 3,536 free persons and 839 slaves. Unit­ ed States Census Office. 5th Census, I83O. Abstract of the Returns of the Fifth Census...(Washington, I832 /New York, 1944?7T, p. 41. During the next ten years, the proportion diminished because the country was settled so rapidly; but the number of slaves in Monroe County in I84O (Monroe County was subdivided from Ralls County in I83I and included Florida) shows a good seven to one ratio. United States Census Office. 6th Census, I84O, Compendium of the Enumera­ tion of the Inhabitants and Statistics of the United States...(Wash- ington, I8"40j, pp. 88-90. ? Brashear, Son of Missouri, p. 52. ° Wecter, Sam Clemens, p. 57. 9 J well as a flourishing distillery up at the stillhouse branch." n if The Clemenses found that there were a few mansions in Hannibal, and; .10 ij that the average house was far superior to the dwellings of Florida.;! ;< They also discovered that the slave ratio for Hannibal's Marion j[ '•} County was greater than that of neighboring Monroe County: the 1830 J s Census shows that there were three free persons to every slave in 11 '• 12 Marion County; • and in 1840 the ratio of seven free to two slave was still quite high. Looking back upon this period many years later, Twain was able to recapture some of the general atmosphere and characteristics of the town: In the small town of Hannibal, Missouri, when I was a boy, everybody was poor, but didn't know it; and everybody was comfortable, and did know it. And there were grades of society—people of good family, people of unclassified family, people of no family. Everybody knew everybody, and was affable to everybody, and nobody put on any visible airs; yet the class lines were quite clearly drawn and the familiar social life of each class was restricted to that class. It was a little democracy which was full of liberty, equality, and Fourth of July, and sincerely so, too; yet you perceived that the aristo­ cratic taint was there. It was there, and nobody found fault with the fact, or ever stopped to reflect that its presence was an inconsistency. I suppose that this state of things was mainly due to the circumstance that the town's population had come from slave states and still had the institution of slavery with them in their new home.13 The people Twain knew as a boy were hardy frontier stock, "honest, kindly, lazy, half-literate rustics who chewed tobacco, y Wecter, Sam Clemens. 60. Bernard DeVoto, Mark Twain's America (Boston, 1932), p. 29. United States Census Office. 5th Census, I83O, p. 41. 12 United States Census Office. 6th Census, 1840, pp. 88-90. 13 Twain, Autobiography. I, 119-120. 4 drank hard liquor and loved to wrestle, but who seldom saw a book or magazine..." ^ Their religion, which was a vital part of their lives, was a curious mixture of fundamentalism and superstitious beliefs. Whereas the Negroes combined Christianity with the mys­ teries of voodoo with its charms, its incantations and the evil-eye, the whites with their fundamentalist faith in hell-fire and damna­ tion found it natural to be apprehensive concerning ghosts and spirits.
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