Description:
The Jester and the Sages approaches the life and work of Mark Twain by placing him in conversation with three eminent philosophers of his time--Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud, and Karl Marx. Unprecedented in Twain scholarship, this interdisciplinary analysis supplements the traditional appreciation of the forces that drove Twain's creativity and the dynamics of his humor by exploring how his reflections on religion, politics, philosophy, morality, and social issues overlap the philosophers' developed thoughts on these subjects.