Synopses & Reviews
Like its popular predecessor, this critical edition is designed for "teaching the conflicts" surrounding Mark Twains classic novel. It reprints the 1885 text of the first American edition (with a portfolio of illustrations) along with critical essays representing major critical and cultural controversies surrounding the work. The novel and essays are supported by distinctive editorial material — including introductions to critical conflict in literary studies, to Twains life and work, and to each critical controversy highlighted in this edition — that helps students grapple not only with the novels critical issues but also with cultural debates about literature itself. In addition to several new critical essays, the second edition includes an appendix on how to argue about the novel so that students may more effectively enter the critical conversation about its issues.
About the Author
Mark Twain was a humorist, satirist, lecturer and writer. Twain is most noted for his novels Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which has since been called the Great American Novel, and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. During his lifetime, Twain became a friend to presidents, artists, leading industrialists and European royalty
Table of Contents
Why Study Critical Controversies?
PART I. MARK TWAIN AND ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN
The Life of Samuel Clemens and the Reception of Huckleberry Finn
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: The 1885 Text
A Portfolio of Illustrations from the 1885 Edition
PART II. A CASE STUDY IN CRITICAL CONTROVERSY
The Controversy over the Ending: Did Mark Twain Sell Jim Down the River?
Lionel Trilling, A Certain Formal Aptness
T.S. Eliot, The Boy and the River: Without Beginning or End
Leo Marx, Mr. Eliot, Mr. Trilling, and Huckleberry Finn
James M. Cox, Attacks on the Ending and Twain's Attack on Conscience
Jane Smiley, from Say It Ain't So, Huck: Second Thoughts on Twain's "Masterpiece"
Seymour Chwast, Selling Huck Down the River
The Controversy over Race: Does Huckleberry Finn Combat or Reinforce Racist Attitudes?
Julius Lester, Morality and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Justin Kaplan, Born to Trouble: One Hundred Years of Huckleberry Finn
Peaches Henry, The Struggle for Tolerance: Race and Censorship in Huckleberry Finn
Shelley Fisher Fishkin, from Lighting Out for the Territory
Gerry Brenner, More than a Reader's Response: A Letter to "De Ole True Huck"
James Phelan, On the Nature and Status of Covert Texts: A Reply to
Gerry Brenner's "Letter to 'De Ole True Huck'"
Jonathan Arac, from Huckleberry Finn as Idol and Target
Toni Morrison, On Reading Huckleberry Finn
Jocelyn Chadwick-Joshua, from The Jim Dilemma: Reading Race in Huckleberry Finn
The Controversy over Gender and Sexuality: Are Twain's Sexual Politics Progressive, Regressive, or Beside the Point?
Nancy A. Walker, Reformers and Young Maidens: Women and Virtue in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Myra Jehlen, Reading Gender in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Frederick Crews, Walker versus Jehlen versus Twain
Martha Woodmansee, A Response to Frederick Crews
Appendix: How to Argue about Huckleberry Finn