Teaching Mark Twain in Undergraduate British and American Novel Class

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Mark Twain's works are very good texts for students' understanding of American literature and culture deeply and comprehensively, However, professors teaching Mark Twain could be confronted with several problems: how to teach vernacular language in his works; how to deal with the massive volume; how to teach various issues systematically. This article aims to present a way to solve these problems, based on my experiences of teaching Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court in novel classes. One of good methods of discussing the various issues systematically in his works is focusing on his contemporary dominant discourses and his critiques on them. In teaching Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the black discourse is the comtemporary dominant dicourse to concentrate on. I tried to discuss various issues in my classes, mainly relating them to exploring how Twain was contained in his contemporary black discourse and how he resisted it at the same time. The representation of the blacks in the work is a good example to show this. To what extent Huck can have human relationship with Jim is an important question to contest his interaction with his contemporary discourse. In my paper I examine various issues and problems I was faced with in the classes. In teaching A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, the crucial discourses are industrialism and modernity. Here, what must be paid attention to is that although industrialism is a part of modernity, it is convenient to deal it separately from the issue of modernity. Twain was dominated by those discourses, but he criticized them on the other hand. Various issues can be discussed, related with the question how much he was contained in the discourse of modernity and how much he criticized it. Students' understanding of this work and his contemporary dominant discourses can be enhanced by discussing his ambivalence toward modernization, democracy. and the Medieval feudalism.