Mark Twain
By: Peter Messent.
Series: Modern novelists
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 1997
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 235
Subjects: Twain, Mark, 1835-1910 -- Criticism and interpretation.; Humorous stories, American -- History and criticism.
Description: This book provides an overview of Mark Twain's work and a close critical analysis of his major texts, and includes chapters on Huckleberry Finn, A Connecticut Yankee and Puddn'head Wilson. Using recent cultural and literary theory to re-examine Twain's travel-writing and fictions, and written in a refreshingly jargon-free and accessible manner, Peter Messent begins by discussing one of Twain's oddest but most comic short stories, 'The Stolen White Elephant'.

This tale of an elephant on the loose, causing havoc wherever it goes, and hunted by the logical but myopic Detective Blunt, serves as a revealing point of entry to Twain's narratives as a whole, with their stress on shifting perspective, incongruity and constant undecideability.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 228-231) and index.