ABSTRACT
Mark Twain’s relationship to the humor of his region is probably less direct than it is usually thought to be. That the humor of the old Southwest is indeed part of his heritage can be, and has been, demonstrated; the proposition is by now axiomatic. Mark Twain transcends this tradition. Faced with the literary problem of presenting many of the themes and moods that in various ways attracted such diverse minds as Poe, Hawthorne, Melville, Henry James, and Henry Adams, Twain, to be sure, found solutions different from theirs. But this difference is not to be measured solely by the scale of Twain’s adherence to the models of his southwestern predecessors.
