The Adventures of Tom Sawyer - Walter Blair (essay date 1939)
Walter Blair (essay date 1939)
SOURCE: "On the Structure of Tom Sawyer," in Modern Philology, Vol. 37, No. 1, August, 1939, pp. 75-96.
[Blair was an American author and editor who wrote two book-length studies of Huckleberry Finn. In the following essay, he demonstrates that Tom Sawyer was written partly as a response to the didactic children's fiction of Twain's day.]
Since, as several critics have suggested, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) attacked earlier juvenile literature in something roughly like the way Joseph Andrews attacked Pamela, a note on the structure of the novel may well start though it should not, I think, terminate) with a consideration of Clemens' book in its literary contexts. Such a consideration, by indicating the nature of the writings attacked and the way Mark Twain and other American humorists assaulted them, may emphasize certain architectural peculiarities in the...
[The entire page is 4845 words long]
Join eNotes
Over 3,500 study guides, question and answer forums, literature criticism, reference content, and much more!
Navigate
Related Topics
