Twain the innocents abroad6/5/2023 ![]() ![]() ![]() That statement is open to debate, but I like my odds. ![]() Readers, then and now, find more rewards, per pound, in The Innocents Abroad than any other work in his canon. ![]() The narrative engages with a formidable range of travel writing tropes and successfully takes readers on a rollicking tour of a world in transition and does so with a voice both reverent and scornful, staid and boisterous. We generally made them feel rather small, too, before we got done with them, because we bore down on them with America’s greatness until we crushed them.” In the closing pages, he captures the overall tone quite efficiently as he describes the symbolic posture of the American tourists as they moved from site to site: “The people stared at us every where, and we stared at them. Twain throughout the text reveals in numerous ways his understanding of a changing national identity, and his narrative announces a new cultural force of American emergence that would demand attention. In context with the vast and often energetic public dialogue built around American travelers to the Old World, it signaled a shift of sensibilities that matched a growing self-awareness-a confidence, a brashness-within the American collective psyche. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |