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- Herausgeber: Diamond Book Publishing
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022
The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson begins with the act of a young slave girl exchanging her light-skinned child, fearing for its safety, for that of her master's. From this reversal of identities evolves a suspenseful murder mystery and courtroom drama. "The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson" is everything one would expect from a novel by Mark Twain. On the surface it is a witty and satirical tale but as one digs deeper a biting social commentary of racial inequality can be found.
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Mark Twain
The Tragedy of Puddnhead Wilson Preview
From The Author of Tom Sawyer
Table of contents
A WHISPER TO THE READER
CHAPTER I. PUDD’NHEAD WINS HIS NAME
By
Mark Twain
Table of Contents
A WHISPER TO THE READER
CHAPTER I. PUDD’NHEAD WINS HIS NAME
CHAPTER II. DRISCOLL SPARES HIS SLAVES
CHAPTER III. ROXY PLAYS A SHREWD TRICK
CHAPTER IV. THE WAYS OF THE CHANGELINGS
CHAPTER V. THE TWINS THRILL DAWSON’S LANDING
CHAPTER VI. SWIMMING IN GLORY
CHAPTER VII. THE UNKNOWN NYMPH
CHAPTER VIII. MARSE TOM TRAMPLES HIS CHANCE
CHAPTER IX. TOM PRACTISES SYCOPHANCY
CHAPTER X. THE NYMPH REVEALED
CHAPTER XI. PUDD’NHEAD’S STARTLING DISCOVERY
CHAPTER XII. THE SHAME OF JUDGE DRISCOLL
CHAPTER XIII. TOM STARES AT RUIN
CHAPTER XIV. ROXANA INSISTS UPON REFORM
CHAPTER XV. THE ROBBER ROBBED
CHAPTER XVI. SOLD DOWN THE RIVER
CHAPTER XVII. THE JUDGE UTTERS DIRE PROPHECY
CHAPTER XVIII. ROXANA COMMANDS
CHAPTER XIX. THE PROPHECY REALIZED
CHAPTER XX. THE MURDERER CHUCKLES
CHAPTER XXI. DOOM
CONCLUSION
A WHISPER TO THE READER
There is no character, howsoever good and fine, but it can be destroyed by ridicule, howsoever poor and witless. Observe the ass, for instance: his character is about perfect, he is the choicest spirit among all the humbler animals, yet see what ridicule has brought him to. Instead of feeling complimented when we are called an ass, we are left in doubt.—Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar.
A person who is ignorant of legal matters is always liable to make mistakes when he tries to photograph a court scene with his pen; and so I was not willing to let the law chapters in this book go to press without first subjecting them to rigid and exhausting revision and correction by a trained barrister—if that is what they are called. These chapters are right, now, in every detail, for they were rewritten under the immediate eye of William Hicks, who studied law part of a while in southwest Missouri thirty-five years ago and then came over here to Florence for his health and is still helping for exercise and board in Macaroni Vermicelli’s horse-feed shed which is up the back alley as you turn around the corner out of the Piazza del Duomo just beyond the house where that stone that Dante used to sit on six hundred years ago is let into the wall when he let on to be watching them build Giotto’s campanile and yet always got tired looking as soon as Beatrice passed along on her way to get a chunk of chestnut cake to defend herself with in case of a Ghibelline outbreak before she got to school, at the same old stand where they sell the same old cake to this day and it is just as light and good as it was then, too, and this is not flattery, far from it. He was a little rusty on his law, but he rubbed up for this book, and those two or three legal chapters are right and straight, now. He told me so himself.
Given under my hand this second day of January, 1893, at the Villa Viviani, village of Settignano, three miles back of Florence, on the hills—the same certainly affording the most charming view to be found on this planet, and with it the most dreamlike and enchanting sunsets to be found in any planet or even in any solar system—and given, too, in the swell room of the house, with the busts of Cerretani senators and other grandees of this line looking approvingly down upon me as they used to look down upon Dante, and mutely asking me to adopt them into my family, which I do with pleasure, for my remotest ancestors are but spring chickens compared with these robed and stately antiques, and it will be a great and satisfying lift for me, that six hundred years will.
Mark Twain.
CHAPTER I. PUDD’NHEAD WINS HIS NAME
Tell the truth or trump—but get the trick.—Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar.
The scene of this chronicle is the town of Dawson’s Landing, on the Missouri side of the Mississippi, half a day’s journey, per steamboat, below St. Louis.
In 1830 it was a snug little collection of modest one- and two-story frame dwellings whose whitewashed exteriors were almost concealed from sight by climbing tangles of rose-vines, honeysuckles, and morning-glories. Each of these pretty homes had a garden in front fenced with white palings and opulently stocked with hollyhocks, marigolds, touch-me-nots, prince’s-feathers and other old-fashioned flowers; while on the window-sills of the houses stood wooden boxes containing moss-rose plants and terra-cotta pots in which grew a breed of geranium whose spread of intensely red blossoms accented the prevailing pink tint of the rose-clad house-front
