On Mark Twain's Criticism On US Reality

Mark Twain is a famous US writer, a representative critical writer for realistic literature of the late-half nineteenth century. Mark Twain has created lots of realistic works, which launched a severe criticism on US reality of the late-half nineteenth century. Since long, Mark Twain's literature contributions, has drawn much concern, whereas much less concern and remarks by researchers from domestic and abroad is on the historic value among his literary works as well as his personal behaviors of the time. Therefore, an excellent inside viewpoint for researchers of US history has led to the analysis into realistic US problems involved in his works as well as the assessment on Mark Twain's historic contributions instead of literature contributions.This thesis firstly illustrates Mark Twain's profound concern and raging criticism by analyzing his realistic literary works and summarizing main aspects of his criticism; afterwards, comparing relevant US historical documents of the time, it explores historical existence of his realistic creation, reasons of his criticism, besides, his personality and personal behaviors; lastly, based on the integrated analysis of both Mark Twain's works and US reality, it displays loftiness of a profoundly-passionate US writer, his historic significance under literary prestige, his main contributions and limits, his own destiny in the history of US development as well.This thesis, through its discussion and analysis, has testified the remarks from the famous British litterateur Bernard Shaw: "I am persuaded that the future historian of American will find your works as indispensable to him as a French historian finds the political tracts of Voltaire." It can be surely concluded that Mark Twain has left a rich heritage to US history and history research, in addition to his great devotion to US literature's upspring from the garden of world literature.The thesis starts with realistic US literature, displays a real process of US history, discusses a historical topic, and infers some relevant references on history and life consequently. This is a helpful probe into ways of practical history research at new stage, with obvious academic and realistic significance.