Mark Twain's Ethical Realism: The Aesthetics of Race, Class and Gender

xii+174 pages with index. Royal octavo (9 1/4" x 6 1/4") bound in original publisher's blue cloth with silver lettering to spine. First edition review copy. Mark Twain's interest in the relationship between ethics and aesthetics provides the basis for this groundbreaking work of scholarship. Beginning with Twain's observation that a writer of realism becomes "like another conscience" for readers, Joe fulton asks, "What is literary realism?" "In what ways is realism ethical?" Taking a hard look at recent criticism of Mark Twain and American realism, Fulton explores the skepticism associated with terns such as realism that has led scholars to ignore Twain's view of how a writer creates believable fictions. Recent critics have also attacked the claim that realistic writing is ethically oriented and ignored Twain's belief that because realism demands the authentic depiction of individuals living on the "other" side of race, class, or gender boundaries, it honors their subjectivity. Realism introduces a conventional readership to these "others," Fulton argues, and so fuses ethical and aesthetic concerns. Russia's philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin's neglected, early theories of ethics and aesthetics provide a theoretical framework and vocabulary for Fulton's discussion of Twain's ethical realism. Bakhtin's concept of creativity bears a striking resemblance to Twain's belief that the writer who strives for a realistic depiction of characters becomes "another conscience" within the work of art. For Twain, the realism of portraying people "as they do talk" is inextricably associated with becoming that other conscience for his characters and readers. Likewise, within his novels, Twain's doubled and switched characters serve as another conscience of each other. This work is the only work that looks specifically at how Twain blends ethical and aesthetic concerns in the act of composing novels. A fine copy in like jacket.