At the beginning of Pudd''nhead Wilson a young slave
woman, fearing for her infant''s son''s life, exchanges her
light-skinned child with her master''s.From this rather
simple premise Mark Twain fashioned one of his most entertaining,
funny, yet biting novels.On its surface, Pudd''nhead
Wilson possesses all the elements of an engrossing
nineteenth-century mystery:reversed identities, a
horrible crime, an eccentric detective, a suspenseful courtroom
drama, and a surprising, unusual solution.Yet it is not
a mystery novel.Seething with the undercurrents of
antebellum southern culture, the book is a savage indictment in
which the real criminal is society, and racial prejudice and
slavery are the crimes.Written in 1894, Pudd''nhead
Wilson glistens with characteristic Twain humor, with suspense,
and with pointed irony:a gem among the author''s later
works.
關於作者:
Mark Twain was born Samuel Langhorne Clemens in 1835. He
gained national attention as a humorist in 1865 with the
publication of "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,"
but was acknowledged as a great writer by the literary
establishment with The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn
1885. In 1880, Twain began promoting and financing the ill-fated
Paige typesetter, an invention designed to make the printing
process fully automatic. At the height of his naively optimistic
involvement in the technological "wonder" that nearly drove him to
bankruptcy, he published his satire, A Connecticut Yankee in
King Arthur''s Court 1889. Plagued by personal tragedy and
financial failure, Mark Twain spent the last years of his life in
gloom and exasperation, writing fables about "the damned human
race."