『「まぬけのウィルソンの悲劇」と「かの異形の双生児の喜劇」』の一貫性と整合性について

抄録

  Ernest Hemingway once said, “All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn.” He continued, however, to say about the second part of the story, “If you read it, you must stop where the Nigger Jim is stolen from the boys [sic]. That is the real end. The rest is just cheating.” As with Huckleberry Finn, most of Mark Twain's long novels have often been criticized as incoherent in the development of thematic concerns and inconsistent in the description of characters. The same is particularly true of his quaint-looking combined story, The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson and the Comedy of Those Extraordinary Twins (1894). Yet, this book seems to me a tightly united and connected novel. In order to reveal this, the following questions will be discussed in this paper, especially in the light of the writer's traumatic autobiographical facts. Why is the title character and the hero of the former story, Wilson, mocked as a pudding-head? Why is this story titled Wilson's tragedy, not Roxy's nor Tom's? Why did Mark Twain add the latter farce of Those Extraordinary Twins to the former tragic drama of Pudd'nhead Wilson?