ABSTRACT
Literary comedy, in relation to Mark Twain's canon, offers two insights. First, a minor literary tradition appears to have become a major visionary phenomenon through a combination of literary and historical events that are generally ignored in interpreting Twain's work. The Americanness of Twain's writing is in great part expressed by materials from this tradition—the vulgar pose, ironic showmanship, pragmatic valuing of the individual over the bureaucracy. Second, recognizing the roots of Twain's beliefs, new ethical implications seem to appear in his canon. Twain's early humor, along with Artemus Ward's, shows the embryonic development of a major social viewpoint. Twain's later pessimism may also relate to the comic tradition. The increasing pessimism of Twain's works, particularly the later ones identified by John Tuckey in volumes of the Twain Papers, may owe something to this enlargement of American culture beyond the personal scale.
