Read more
Though one of America’s best known and loved novels, Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has often been the object of fierce controversy because of its racist language and reliance on racial stereotypes. This collection of fifteen essays by prominent African American scholars and critics examines the novel’s racist elements and assesses the degree to which Twain’s ironies succeed or fail to turn those elements into a satirical attack on racism.
Ranging from the laudatory to the openly hostile, these essays include personal impressions of Huckleberry Finn, descriptions of classroom experience with the book, evaluations of its ironic and allegorical aspects, explorations of its nineteenth-century context, and appraisal of its effects on twentieth-century African American writers. Among the issues the authors contend with are Twain’s pervasive use of the word “nigger,” his portrayal of the slave Jim according to the conventions of the minstrel show “darky,” and the thematic chaos created by the “evasion” depicted in the novel’s final chapters.
Sure to provoke thought and stir debate, Satire or Evasion? provides a variety of new perspectives on one of this country’s most troubling classics. Contributors. Richard K. Barksdale, Bernard W. Bell, Mary Kemp Davis, Peaches M. Henry, Betty Harris Jones, Rhett S. Jones, Julius Lester, Donnarae MacCann, Charles H. Nichols, Charles H. Nilon, Arnold Rampersad, David L. Smith, Carmen Dubryan, John H. Wallace, Kenny Jackson Williams, Fredrick Woodard
List of contents
Acknowledgments v
Introduction: The Controversy over
Huckleberry Finn / James S. Leonard and Thomas A. Tenney 1
Huck Finn and the Authorities
The Case Against
Huck Finn / John H. Wallace 16
The Struggle for Tolerance: Race and Censorship in
Huckleberry Finn / Peaches Henry 25
History, Slavery, and Thematic Irony in
Huckleberry Finn / Richard K. Barksdale 49
Jim and Huck in the Nineteenth Century
The Ending of
Huckleberry Finn: "Freeing the Free Negro" / Charles H. Nilon 62
The Veil Rant in Twain: Degradation and Revelation in
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn / Mary Kemp Davis 77
Mark Twain and the Black Challenge / Carmen Subryan 91
Huck, Jim, and American Racial Discourse / David L. Smith 103
Blackface and White Inside
Twain's "Nigger" Jim: The Tragic Face behind the Minstrel Mask / Bernard W. Bell 124
About the author
James S. Leonard, Thomas A. Tenney and Thadious M. Davis, eds.
