| | 1 | Author: | Sewell
David R.
1954- | Add | | | Title: | Mark Twain's Languages  | | | | Published: | 2003 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Modern English collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | "Mark Twain's philosophy of language": surely something
seems wrong with the phrase. It is pretentious, it claims too
much, it takes itself too seriously. Mark Twain was a novelist,
not an academic philosopher. Yet we would not balk if
the name were "Melville" or "James," or if "language" were
changed to "history" or "religion." Novelists can be philosophical,
and Mark Twain wrote at least one book, What Is
Man?, that claimed to be philosophy; the systematic determinism
of his later years is notorious.1 We readily grant him a
thorough amateur knowledge of European history but hesitate
to admit his expertise in the very medium of which we
claim he was a master. Why? | | | Similar Items: | Find |
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