Were Tom and Huck On-Shelf? Public Libraries, Mark Twain, and the Formation of Accessible Canons, 1869––1910

2009 ◽  
Vol 64 (2) ◽  
pp. 189-224 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bernadette A. Lear
Keyword(s):  
Gilded Age ◽  
Public Libraries ◽  
Mark Twain ◽  
The United States ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Huckleberry Finn

Public libraries are "accessible canons" for their communities. As part of their efforts to connect people and ideas, librarians purchase classic and bestselling books from "selective," "personal," "nonce," and other canons. They also create bibliographies, professional standards, and other tools that help shape reading habits. Thus libraries embody complex, ongoing processes of canon using and canon forming. This essay illustrates the canonical activities of American public libraries during the early years of the profession. It describes the American Library Association Catalog, local finding lists and accession records, and other primary sources that shed light on collection building during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Taking Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens) as a case study, it presents statistics on library ownership during the author's lifetime from more than seven hundred communities across the United States. Tables focus on nine titles: The Innocents Abroad, Roughing It, The Gilded Age, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Prince and the Pauper, Life on the Mississippi, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, and The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson. Statistical analysis reveals that "controversial" items such as Huckleberry Finn were widely available in Gilded-Age and Progressive-era public libraries, thus calling into question some assumptions about censorship of Twain's work. Also, library holdings of some titles varied by decade and geography, demonstrating that libraries implemented "national" and "recognized" canons unevenly. In sum, the essay shifts attention toward the operationalization of literary canons and provides empirical evidence of Mark Twain's presence in the late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century literary landscape.

Politics, Social Movements, and the Periodization of U.S. History

2009 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 461-473 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Edwards
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Progressive Era ◽  
Gilded Age ◽  
Recent Literature ◽  
Mark Twain ◽  
The United States ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Considerable Doubt

It may be perilous for a member of the Society of Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era to propose, in the Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, that we cease using the term “Gilded Age” as a label for the late nineteenth century. Since I admire Mark Twain, who famously coined the term in a novel that he cowrote with Charles Dudley Warner, such a suggestion feels disloyal if not downright un-American. But in struggling recently to write a synthesis of the United States between 1865 and 1905 (cutoff dates that I chose with considerable doubt), it became apparent to me that “Gilded Age” is not a very useful or accurate term. Intended as an indictment of the elite, it captures none of the era's grassroots ferment and little of its social and intellectual complexity. A review of recent literature suggests that periodizing schemes are now in flux, and a reconsideration may be in order.

scholarly journals Psychological motivation of Jim as a runaway slave in Mark Twain�s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 134
Author(s):  
Niken Khusnul Nibiya ◽  
Heri Dwi Santoso ◽  
Yesika Maya Ocktarani
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Mississippi River ◽  
Mark Twain ◽  
The United States ◽  
Capital Gain ◽  
Hierarchy Of Needs ◽  
Abraham Maslow ◽  
Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn ◽  
Huckleberry Finn

�Adventures of Huckleberry Finn� is a great novel written in the nineteenth century by Mark Twain, the pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens. According to critics, this novel was written to criticise practices of slavery in the United States during his time, especially in states along the Mississippi river banks. This research aimed at explaining the hierarchy of needs of Jim and the motivations of his escape. The method used in this research was qualitative, with humans� hierarchy of needs by Abraham Maslow employed. The analysis showed that the needs of Jim were divided into three phases, i.e., the phase of Jim as a slave, the phase of Jim as a runaway slave, and the phase of Jim as a free man. The results showed that there were four reasons why Jim decided to escape from Mrs. Watson, his master, i.e., 1) the master�s anger at Jim, 2) Jim�s conscience about himself as the object for capital gain, 3) his freedom as a human, and 4) his own happiness. It is concluded from the research that as a slave, Jim feels that his life needs cannot be fulfilled even when he is already free as long as he can never be reunited with his wife and children, who he thinks will give happiness to him. Based on the theory of Maslow�s hierarchy of needs, Jim�s higher level of need is love-and-belonging need.�

Dilemmas and Prospects of Writing a Bahá’í Encyclopedia

1989 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-31
Author(s):  
Will C. Van Den Hoonaard
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Present Status ◽  
Public Libraries ◽  
High Standard ◽  
The United States ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
General Reader ◽  
Encyclopedic Dictionary ◽  
Current Stage

This paper addresses the need for a Bahá’í encyclopedia and describes the nature, organization, and editing of the multi-volume Bahá’í encyclopedic dictionary project endorsed in 1984 by the United States Bahá’í community. The encyclopedia will serve both Bahá’í and non-Bahá’í researchers arid scholars, the general reader; and university and public libraries. This paper considers the significance of the encyclopedia in terms of other Bahá’í encyclopedic works and in terms of the current stage in the development of the Bahá’í community. However desirable such a project may be, a number of dilemmas accompany its undertaking. These dilemmas relate to the present status of Bahá’í scholarship, the embryonic nature of primary sources, the high standard of scholarship exemplified by the works of Shoghi Effendi, and the relative newness of the Bahá’í religion. The prospects of the encyclopedic undertaking are expected to generate considerable scholarship and to provide intellectual vigor to issues raised by Bahá’ís and their critics.

scholarly journals Translating national history for children: a case study of a classic

2018 ◽  
Vol 71 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-116
Author(s):  
B.J. Epstein
Keyword(s):  
Race Relations ◽  
Adult Readers ◽  
National History ◽  
Language And Culture ◽  
Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn ◽  
Black Characters ◽  
History Of ◽  
Child Readers ◽  
Huckleberry Finn

Mark Twain’s classic novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is arguably about the history of theUnited States in terms of slavery and race relations. How, then, can this be translated to another language and culture, especially one with a very different background in regard to minorities? And in particular, how can this be translated for children, who have less knowledge about history and slavery than adult readers? In this essay, I analyse how Twain’s novel has been translated to Swedish. I study 15 translations. Surprisingly, I find that instead of retaining Twain’s even-handed portrayal of the two races and his acceptance of a wide variety of types of Americans, Swedish translators tend to emphasise the foreignness, otherness, and lack of education of the black characters. In other words, although the American setting is kept, the translators nevertheless give Swedish readers a very different understanding of theUnited Statesand slavery than that which Twain strove to give his American readers. This may reflect the differences in immigration and cultural makeup inSwedenversus inAmerica, but it radically changes the book as well as child readers’ understanding of what makes a nation.

scholarly journals A Comparative Study of Transference of Humor in Translations of “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” by Mark Twain

2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (6) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Rezvan Barzegar Hossieni ◽  
Mohsen Mobaraki ◽  
Maryam Rabani Nia
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Study ◽  
Cultural Differences ◽  
Mark Twain ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Complex Task ◽  
Source Language ◽  
Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn ◽  
Huckleberry Finn

Translation is a difficult and complex task. Some elements such as linguistic and socio-cultural differences in two languages make it difficult to choose an appropriate equivalent; the equivalent which has the same effect in the target language. In the present study, one of the richest sources of the humor and satire is investigated. Humor is completely obvious in “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” by Mark Twain. He tried to laugh at social and cultural problems of his time by this novel. Two translations of this book by Hushang Pirnazar and Najaf Daryabandari are investigated. The author tries to investigate on transference of humor from the source language to the target language by a syntactic strategy of Chesterman. By investigating the text, it will be found out that which translator is more successful in recreation of humor by using the strategies. 

Remember the Ladies: Competition and Mobilization in the United States

2018 ◽  
pp. 83-132
Author(s):  
Dawn Langan Teele
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Geography ◽  
Gilded Age ◽  
Political Competition ◽  
State Legislatures ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Us ◽  
Race Ethnicity

This chapter presents a case study of women's enfranchisement in the United States. It argues that the formation of a broad coalition of women, symbolized by growing membership in a large non-partisan suffrage organization, in combination with competitive conditions in state legislatures, was crucial to securing politicians' support for women's suffrage in the states. The chapter first gives a broad overview of the phases of the US suffrage movement, arguing that the salience of political cleavages related to race, ethnicity, nativity, and class influenced the type of movement suffragists sought to build. It then describes the political geography of the Gilded Age, showing how the diversity of political competition and party organization that characterized the several regions mirrors the pattern of women's enfranchisement across the states.

16. Human Trafficking

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea M. Bertone
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Human Trafficking ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
The United States ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
White Slavery ◽  
Global Issue ◽  
Late Nineteenth

This chapter examines how the international community has defined and framed the issue of human trafficking over the last century, and how governments such as the United States have responded politically to the problem of human trafficking. Contemporary concerns about trafficking can be traced back to a late nineteenth-century movement in the United States and Western Europe against white slavery. White slavery, also known as the white slave trade, refers to the kidnapping and transport of Caucasian girls and women for the purposes of prostitution. The chapter first considers the definitions of human trafficking before discussing the anti-white slavery movement and the increase in international consciousness about the trafficking of women. It then traces the origins of the contemporary anti-human trafficking movement and analyses how trafficking emerged as a global issue in the 1990s. It also presents a case study on human trafficking in the United States.

Porfirian Commercial Propaganda: Mexico in the World Industrial Expositions

1977 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 230-243 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gene Yeager
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Latin American ◽  
World Trade ◽  
Gilded Age ◽  
The United States ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
The World ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Latin American Countries ◽  
Trade And Investment

Students of late nineteenth century history have long dismissed the world industrial expositions as glittering, but not highly significant reflections of the gilded age. What emerges from the literature of the period, however, is a sense of the overriding commercial importance of these exhibitions. Nineteenth-century observers consistently linked the fairs to the general growth of world trade and to the expanding commercial hegemony of the United States. More specifically, contemporaries agreed that the expositions served to develop trade and investment ties with Latin America. Among the Latin American countries represented in the expositions, Mexico was the most important and consistent participant.

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