Table of Contents:
Prologue………………………………………………………….…….….….3
Expository Research……………………………….…………….….4-6
Multi-Genre Project…………………………………………………7-12
Epilogue……………………………………………………….……………..13
Works Cited ………………………………………………….……………14
Prologue.
When I was thinking about the topic for my research paper I could not come up with any ideas. Then I looked through my entire English binder and realized that we had just learned about Mark Twain. I have learned about him but I did not know much about him. So I decided to write this multi-genre research paper in Mark Twain’s impact on American literature. I picked this topic because I find Twain’s personality very interesting. He is best known as the author of the Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn but not everyone knows his whole life story. Many of Mark Twain’s humorous tales of human nature remain as standard texts in most of high school and college literature classes. He is still well-read and obviously he was a tremendously popular figure and a celebrated speaker in his own days.
Mark Twain is a unique person for many reasons. Let’s just start with his pseudonym: it was taken from Mississippi riverboat terminology, which means a measure of depth. Another interesting fact about the write is that he was born and died in the years in which Halley’s Comet passed by Earth: 1835 and 1910.
As well as giving information on Mark Twain’s personal life I want to present to the reader his incredible works, most of which are autobiographical. Twain’s language is different from other writers’. George Bernard Shaw once said, “Mark Twain and I are in the same position. We have put things in such a way as to make people, who would otherwise hang us, believe that we are joking”. Shaw said that because Mark Twain was most famous for making fun of the society of his generation. But nevertheless he reached a wide
Cited: Fishkin, Shelley Fisher. Lighting Out For The Territory: Reflections On Mark Twain And American Culture. New York, Oxford University Press. 1997. Print. Michelson, Bruce. Constructing Mark Twain: New Directions in Scholarship. New England Quaterly.2003. eLibrary. Web. 30 Apr 2010. Mark Twain. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Encyclopedia Of World Biography. Detroit, Gale. 2004. Web. 26 Apr 2010. De Koster, Katie. Readings On Mark Twain. San Diego, Greenhaven Press. 1996. Print. Quirk, Thomas V. Twain, Mark. Student Research Center, EBSCOhost, Britannica Biographies. 2010. Web. 26 Apr 2010. Zlatic, Thomas D. Mark Twain’s View Of Universe. Papers On Language And Literature. Literary Reference Center. 2002. Web. 26 Apr 2010.