Abstract

The dissertation explores the ethical dimensions of Mark Twain's realism by applying the early ethical theories of the Russian philosopher, Mikhail Bakhtin. Bakhtin's concept of "insideness," by which an author creates "fully valid voices," bears a striking resemblance to Twain's belief that the writer, by striving for an authentic depiction of character, becomes "another conscience" within the work of art. In a letter to William Dean Howells, Twain wrote that "only you see people & their ways & their insides & outsides as they are, & make them talk as they do talk. It must be a cheerful thing for one to live with you & be aware that you are going up & down in him like another conscience all the time." For Twain, the realism of portraying people "as they do talk" is inextricably associated with becoming "another conscience" for his characters and readers. Likewise, within his novels, Twain's doubled and switched characters become "like another conscience" for each other as they are pressed into the distinctive milieu of the other. Trading places, they experience the life of the other from inside the other's skin; they "author" each other. In The Prince and the Pauper, for example, the pauper Tom Canty and the prince Edward Tudor trade places and act out the other's role in society. The switch thus has both aesthetic and ethical implications. Twain commits himself to the practice of realism in reproducing historically accurate speech of different social classes, but also puts the speakers of these real languages into the unique, particularized linguistic void created by the other's absence. In so doing, he brings his characters into a dialogue that allows each to complete the other's consciousness and conscience. Standing in the other's place, Twain's characters have the opportunity to grasp morally realistic principles. From the beginning of his career to the end of his life, Twain conceived of ethics in aesthetic terms and aesthetics in ethical terms; Bakhtin's theory of ethics and aesthetics affords new insight into Mark Twain's moral realism