마크 트웨인의 남부에 대한 태도와 모더니티의 문제

Abstract

This article aims to explore Twain's attitude toward the South and its relationship with his conceptualization of modernity. For this purpose I examine four of Twain's works, that is, "Old Times on the Mississippi," Life on the Mississippi, the Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Twain's attitude toward the South is ambivalent and complicated. Twain's South in "Old Times on the Mississippi" and before his trip to the Mississippi Valley is a "pristine paradise" in his imagination. Twain portrays the South as a peaceful and beautiful hometown. Yet Life on the Mississippi is teeming with his diatribes against the South and Southerners. I relate this changed attitude to his containment in modernity. When he visited the South in 1882 he was a modern Hartfordian ill prepared for his home-coming. Thus the backward state of the South first captured his eyes and destroyed the antibellum Eden in his illusion. I also interrogate his representation of cities in Life on the Mississippi to demonstrate his transformed attitude toward the South and his containment in modernity. He acclaims modern cities and derides the backwardness of the South in the work, which can be regarded as the indicator of his containment in modernity. In the last part, this article investigates the representation of Tom in the Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. to examine how his changed attitude toward the South influences the creation of the latter. My essay demonstrates that Tom is the representation of postbellum Southern ruling class which is still contained in backward antebellum Southern ideology. I also try to show that the evasion section is Twain's satire of postbellum backward South.