Realism  An artistic creed which holds that the purpose of art is to depict life with complete and objective honesty- to show things “ as they really are. ”  To this end, it values concrete, verifiable details more than sweeping generalizations, and impersonal photographic accuracy more than the artist ’ s individual “ interpretation ” of experience.

 Fiction and painting were the artistic activities in which realism found its greatest scope and most systematic exploitation. The great realistic novelists include Balzac, Flaubert, George, Eliot, James, Tolstoi, Dostoevski, Mark Twain and Verga. The extreme form of realism is often called naturalism.

 As a recognizable literary creed, realism began in the 18 th century with the novels of Defoe and Fielding, but its triumph as a literary school came in the 19 th and early 20 th centuries, under the double influence of the growth of science and philosophical rationalism and of a revolt against the emotional and stylistic excess of the Romantic Movement.  Because the realist sought to avoid idealism and romantic prettifying of his subjects, he often seemed to stress either the commonplace and trivial or the sordid and brutal aspects of life.

 Mark Twain is realistic in its use of colloquial and vernacular speech as opposed to high- flown rhetoric and in its parade of characters drawn from ordinary walks of life.  He elevates American dialect to the Poetic/establish the spoken American idiom as a literary language. 

. In this selection local color and the vernacular are prominently used.  Local color involves the language, clothes, customs, and traditions of a particular region. It is vital for the author to use local color effectively in a realistic selection. Depending on where the story takes place will determine the dialect, clothing, customs, and any other particular items necessary to make the story realistic. For example, if a story takes place in the deep South then it would be necessary to use the southern dialect for the characters ’ speech.

 It would also be necessary to incorporate the traditions and customs of the South. Twain ’ s use of local color in each of his stories is extremely well-done. The reader can sense how the characters look, talk, act, etc.  This is especially true in "The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County." The reader can sense how the character of Simon Wheeler looks, speaks, acts, etc. He fits into his setting.

 Vernacular is the specific dialect in a region. Each area of the United States has a particular vernacular. For example, it is usually obvious where a person is from by the way he/she speaks. A person from the Boston area speaks differently from a person from Georgia or Kansas.

 An author must incorporate the correct vernacular in his/her story to make it realistic. Throughout "Notorious…" it is obvious that the stranger is from the East and Simon Wheeler is from a less educated, western area because of each character’s speech.

Samuel Longhorn Clemens

 born on 30 November, 1835 in Florida, Missouri  spent his boyhood in Hannibal, Missouri  his father died in 1847, therefore he stopped school and went into the world  he learned type setting and worked as a printer in 1853  at the age of 17 he returned to the West and became a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi in 1857

 he began writing for a newspaper and adapted the pen name Mark Twain in 1863  he worked as a journalist in Nevada and New York but had to travel constantly  in May 1867 he published "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County and other sketches"  married Olivia Langdon in 1870 and stayed married until her death in 1904; he fathered 3 daughters

 he was devoted to writing and published 30 works of literature, for example:  The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885)  The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1875)  The Prince and the Pauper  A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur's Court (1889)  many of his works are timeless and have reached the top of American and world literature  he wrote satires, historical fiction, short stories, nonfiction  he died on 12 April, 1910 at Stormfield

 Mark Twain's "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" was first published in the November 18, 1865, edition of The New York Saturday Press, under the title "Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog."  The story, which has also been published as "The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County," is set in a gold-mining camp in Calaveras County, California, and has its origins in the folklore of the Gold Rush era. It was one of Twain's earliest writings, and helped establish his reputation as a humorist. He eventually included it as the title story in his first collection of tales.

 "Jumping Frog" was originally told in epistolary form — that is, as a letter — though some reprints of the tale have since omitted this letter-frame convention.  In the story, Twain recounts his visit, made at the request of a friend back East, to an old man named Simon Wheeler in a California mining camp. Wheeler tells Twain a colorful story about another miner, Jim Smiley. According to Wheeler, Smiley loved to make bets; he would bet on nearly anything.

 Wheeler relates some of Smiley's more famous gambling escapades, one of which concerns a pet frog. Critics frequently cite this story as an example of a tall tale and note Twain's use of humor and exaggeration.  They also emphasize the tale's satirical focus on storytelling and existing cultural differences between the western and eastern regions of the United States.

America in the Mid- to Late-Nineteenth Century  "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" was first published in 1865, when Mark Twain was living in the American Southwest, which was still in the process of being settled.  The Industrial Revolution had brought machinery and factories to the eastern United States, but most of the country, particularly areas west of the Mississippi River, still relied on the land for economic development.

 "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" was a popular success upon its first publication. Some of its success can be attributed to Twain's use of popular storytelling conventions and references to contemporary figures. For example, Twain adopted the humorous tall tale of the American Southwest, a popular genre at the time, to tell this story.  Furthermore, this tale already was an established piece of American folklore that Twain modified and enhanced; early versions of the tale focused on a jumping grasshopper, not a frog.

Structure  The frame tale structure of "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" is one of its most important parts. In a frame tale, one story appears in — that is, it is framed by — another story. In "Jumping Frog" the outer tale focuses on Mark Twain and his meeting with the talkative old storyteller, Simon Wheeler. This meeting occurs at the request of a friend of Twain's, who supposedly wants to find out about an old acquaintance named Leonidas W. Smiley.

 Twain has devised a story-within- a-story framing structure by making his narrator the reluctant audience for his storyteller, Simon Wheeler, and by distinguishing his storyteller from his protagonist, Jim Smiley.

Culture Clash  "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County," highlights various aspects of late nineteenth-century American society and culture through the retelling of a tall tale. Central to the story is the idea of conflicting cultures, particularly the clash between the settled, eastern portion of the United States and the still-developing West.  At the time Twain wrote the story, the East and its inhabitants had a reputation for being civilized, cultured, and advanced. The West, on the other hand, was still being settled