Mark Twain and the Art of the Tall Tale

Mark Twain and the Art of the Tall Tale is a study of a peculiarly American comic strategy and its role in Mark Twain's fiction. Henry Wonham examines how Mark Twain used the oral genre of the tall tale to experiment with narrative structure throughout his career. Wonham argues that in his major fiction Twain manipulated conventional approaches to reading and writing by engaging his audience in a series of rhetorical games, whose rules he adapted from the conventions of tall tale performance and response. The book offers a history of the tall tale in American oral and written language, and shows how Twain's appropriation of the genre developed from the early works such as The Innocents Abroad through Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn, and Pudd'nhead Wilson.