2017 Fiscal Year Final Research Report
Wordplay and Ciphers in Mark Twain's Literature
| Project/Area Number |
16H07128
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| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Research Activity Start-up
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| Allocation Type | Single-year Grants |
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| Research Field |
Literature in English
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| Research Institution | Kobe City University of Foreign Studies |
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Principal Investigator |
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| Project Period (FY) |
2016-08-26 – 2018-03-31
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| Keywords | Mark Twain / マーク・トウェイン / Wordplay / 言葉遊び / Encryption / 暗号 / アメリカ文学 / American Literature |
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| Outline of Final Research Achievements |
The purpose of this study is to show that the nineteenth-century U.S. author Mark Twain used wordplay as a medium of encryption in his literature. I gathered examples of Twain’s wordplay and encryption, as well as evidence of his interest in these two kinds of writing, from his published texts, notebooks, letters, manuscripts, and marginalia. I also conducted research on the culture of wordplay in the nineteenth-century U.S. from which Twain’s interest in wordplay developed. I then combined these two perspectives into a critical framework for examining the use of clandestine wordplay as a tool of encryption in Twain’s literature. Finally, I used this framework to examine how Twain uses wordplay to encode his prose fiction, mainly his short stories and novels.
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| Free Research Field |
アメリカ文学
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