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1 Did Mark Twain bring down the temple on Scott’s shoulders? Susan Manning In Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe (1820), the Grand Master of the Order of the Templars, determined to purify their Preceptory of Templestowe, figures the besotted knight Brian de Bois Guilbert as a Samson entrapped by the sorceries of the Jewess Rebecca-Delilah: with [the] aid [of the saints and angels] will we counteract the spells and charms with which our brother is entwined as in a net. He shall burst the bands of this Dalilah, as Samson burst the two new cords with which the Philistines had
This book addresses the special relationship from the perspective of post-Second World War British governments. It argues that Britain's foreign policy challenges the dominant idea that its power has been waning and that it sees itself as the junior partner to the hegemonic US. The book also shows how at moments of international crisis successive British governments have attempted to re-play the same foreign policy role within the special relationship. It discusses the power of a profoundly antagonistic relationship between Mark Twain and Walter Scott. The book demonstrates Stowe's mis-reading and mis-representation of the Highland Clearances. It explains how Our Nig, the work of a Northern free black, also provides a working-class portrait of New England farm life, removed from the frontier that dominates accounts of American agrarian life. Telegraphy - which transformed transatlantic relations in the middle of the century- was used by spiritualists as a metaphor for the ways in which communications from the other world could be understood. The story of the Bolton Whitman Fellowship is discussed. Beside Sarah Orne Jewett's desk was a small copy of the well-known Raeburn portrait of Sir Walter Scott. Henry James and George Eliot shared a transatlantic literary network which embodied an easy flow of mutual interest and appreciation between their two milieux. In her autobiography, Gertrude Stein assigns to her lifelong companion the repeated comment that she has met three geniuses in her life: Stein, Picasso, and Alfred North Whitehead.
outrage about King Leopold’s exploits in the Congo. In King Leopold’s Soliloquy (1905), Mark Twain has his fictional King Leopold curse ‘the incorruptible Kodak’ as ‘the most powerful enemy that has confronted us [and]... the only witness I have encountered in my long experience that I couldn’t bribe’ (cited in Twomey, ‘Framing Atrocity’: 59). Both books under review here explicitly situate themselves at the intersection of scholarship in media studies and visual culture and the sub
recurring visual theme, and Benedict’s hunch was not far off. In the late 1860s, both William Dean Howells and Mark Twain – the two most distinguished American travel writers of this era – noticed the Pesaro tomb and its African figures, but they were more bemused than offended or impressed by it. Twain (or perhaps his editor) did, however, commission an illustration of
This chapter argues that race and racial equality are a central, stand-alone, and defining preoccupation in Robinson’s oeuvre. This essay argues that Gilead and Home constitute two of the most radical novels on the subject of race and civil rights in America. They have far more in common with Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man (1952) or Toni Morrison’s Jazz (1992) than they do with novels by other white authors that similarly invoke the racial politics of the 1950s and 1960s. Whereas for Philip Roth or Jeffrey Eugenides, for example, racial difference and racial ‘mixing’ exist predominantly as useful metaphors, for Robinson race ‘as race’ is an unresolved conflict at the heart of her project. In this she is allied – to some extent – with William Faulkner, and most closely with the radical writers of the nineteenth-century such as Herman Melville and Mark Twain, as this essay concludes.
level, involving specific and intimate knowledge of one writer by another. Two contributors are particularly concerned with Scottish–American literary relations. Susan Manning’s interest is in the power of a profoundly antagonistic relationship, that between Mark Twain and Walter Scott. She asks questions which extend what is usually conceived of as Twain’s limited, parodic engagement between Scott’s Waverley novels and his own work, in particular, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. In so doing she also, in her words, aims ‘to complicate our current, perhaps
political participation at the local level are real enough but there are rich seams to be mined and clear opportunities to be grasped. Reports of the death of local democracy are much exaggerated, to paraphrase Mark Twain. It may be a bit poorly at times but it is not time for the undertakers to move in yet. This book focuses on local democratic politics in Britain over the last decade and a half. It includes an analysis of civic engagement and participation across a range of policy areas and in the context of debates around accountability, legitimacy, and sustainability
book – Billy Bunter, Jennings & Darbishire and particularly Enid Blyton, whom I loved – and enjoy it at my own speed.’ 46 Once he started there was no stopping him. In a list compiled at the age of 10 he had read 122 books: mostly old-fashioned childhood classics including Biggles, works by Bromley resident Richmal Crompton – the indefatigable schoolboy William's ability to spot fakes made a lasting impression – Arthur Ransome, E. Nesbit and Mark Twain. He added The Jungle Book alongside Pakistani Cricket on the
second, however, was the appearance, after long seclusion, of the sovereign at the centre of this mighty web. The contrast between Victoria’s small, elderly figure, in simple widow’s clothing, and the vast spectacle surrounding her struck many spectators at the time. One observer was the American writer Mark Twain, hired for the occasion by the New York Journal , who offered an intriguing comparison
Printing Terror places horror comics of the mid-twentieth century in dialogue with the anxieties of their age. It rejects the narrative of horror comics as inherently and necessarily subversive and explores, instead, the ways in which these texts manifest white male fears over America’s changing sociological landscape. It examines two eras: the pre-CCA period of the 1940s and 1950s, and the post-CCA era to 1975. The authors examine each of these periods through the lenses of war, gender, and race, demonstrating that horror comics are centred upon white male victimhood and the monstrosity of the gendered and/or racialised other. It is of interest to scholars of horror, comics studies, and American history. It is suitably accessible to be used in undergraduate classes.