Poetry, Prosody, Parody: Mark Twain’s Rhythmic Thought

My essay, “Poetry, Prosody, Parody: Mark Twain’s Rhythmic Thought” argues that although Mark Twain was primarily a prose writer and thinker, poetry and prosody nevertheless exerted a significant influence on his writing and thinking. I begin by analyzing a few of Twain’s poems in order to establish his basic prosodic competence. I then look to Twain’s prose writings, in particular Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, in order to demonstrate poetry’s influence on his exploration of death and the limits of language. Finally, I allude to the ways in which Twain employs the rhythms of language in his humor and in his explorations of race, class, and gender. I conclude that Twain’s work exhibits the sort of “word-musicianship” that he finds lacking in the fiction of James Fenimore Cooper and that, furthermore, prosody helps Twain to think through a variety of crucial issues.