My Platonic Sweetheart
Mark Twain
Mark Twain
• Samuel Langhorne Clemens
(November 30, 1835 – April 21,
1910),better known by his pen
name Mark Twain, was an
American author and humorist.
He is most noted for his novel
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
(1876) and its sequel, Adventures
of Huckleberry Finn (1885), the
latter often called "the Great
American Novel."
• Twain grew up in Hannibal, Missouri, which would
later provide the setting for Huckleberry Finn and
Tom Sawyer. He apprenticed with a printer. He also
worked as a typesetter and contributed articles to his
older brother Orion's newspaper. After toiling as a
printer in various cities, he became a master riverboat
pilot on the Mississippi River before heading west to
join Orion. He was a failure at gold mining, so he
next turned to journalism. While a reporter, he wrote
a humorous story, "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of
Calaveras County," which became very popular and
brought nationwide attention. His travelogues were
also well received. Twain had found his calling.
Mark Twain(1835-1910)
Mark Twain’s Masterpieces
Mark Twain’s Writing Features
represented social life
through portraits of local
places which he knew best
local colour
a texture of most
local color
literature，a kink
of humor
drew from his own rich fund
of knowledge of people and
places
tall tales (highly
exaggerated)
Mark Twain was the first truly
American writer, and all of us since are
his heirs, who descended from him."
he used colloquial
language,
vernacular language,
dialects
words
sentence &
structures
short
concrete
direct in effect
a master of
language
American dialect
an American language
simp1e, even ungrammatical
Mark Twain’s Writing
Features
humour
is of witty remarks mocking
at small things and making
people laugh
is a kind of artistic style
used to criticize the social
injustice
Writing Characteristics of
Mark Twain
• Literature is an art of language. Mark Twain’s language
is artistic and like a sharp weapon without doubt. Mark
Twain is famous for his humor and satire.
• Mark Twain’s humor is based on the humor of the
Western in America.
• He used a lot of colloquial idioms and colloquial syntax.
• He often described persons who was innocent, simple,
naive, and ignorant as his heroes or heroines.
• He used the artistic style of hyperbole on the basis of the
western traditional humor and made his writing full of
allegories that lay behind the humor.
Background information of this
story
• "My Platonic Sweetheart" is a short
dream narrative. It was originally entitled
The Lost Sweetheart and written between
Jul-Aug 1898, but only published in 1912.
Note
Mark Twain was always interested in those
psychic phenomena which we call dreams.
His own sleep fancies were likely to be
vivid, and it was his habit to recall them
and to find interest, and sometimes
amusement, in their detail.
In the story he set down, and not without some
fidelity to circumstance—dream
circumstance—a phase of what we call
recurrent dreams. As the tale progressed he felt
an inclination to treat the subject more fully—
more philosophically—and eventually he laid
the manuscript away. The time did not come
when he was moved to rewrite it; and for the
pure enjoyment of it as a delicate fancy it may
be our good fortune that he left it unchanged.
Questions and discussions
• Why his sweetheart is platonic?
• Why the narrator and his sweetheart have
different names in different dreams?
• What, according to you, did Mark Twain
most beautifully present to us readers in
this story?