nf0057: to Huckleberry Finn [3.1] i'm being recorded here so er [0.6] er [0.4] 
if i go i-, get into a terrible fit of coughing you'll know and just [1.2] 
anyway right [0.8] okay [0.6] when The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn [0.2] was 
published [0.2] in the mid-eighteen-eighties [1.0] the first thing that 
happened was that it ran into a whole barrage of critical flak [1.4] especially 
in the more [0.2] culturally refined Eastern states [0.4] the book was banned 
from numerous schools [0.2] it was withdrawn from public libraries [0.4] it was 
attacked [0.2] in the establishment press [0.7] and it was generally 
disapproved of [1.0] now the reason for this hostility [0.6] wasn't the actual 
plot [0.2] of the novel [0.9] by eighteen-eighty-five remember slavery had 
already been legally abolished for er over twenty years in the U-S [0.4] the 
Emancipation Proclamation was eighteen-sixty-three [0.6] so the story of a 
young boy [0.2] helping an escaped slave wasn't in itself particularly [0.3] 
controversial [0.3] in fact contemporary readers would be more likely to 
approve [0.3] of Huck's action than to [0.2] throw up their hands in outrage [0.
7] so 
the plot itself wasn't a problem [1.3] what did offend the guardians of 
respectable culture though [0.5] was that in just about every other respect 
Huck was such a thoroughly bad lot [1.2] he has slovenly personal habits [0.5] 
he lies he steals he's disrespectful of religion [0.8] er he's scornful of 
respectability and he's an educational dropout to boot [1.2] Louisa May Alcott 
[0.7] who was the author of Little Women [0.6] er friend and associate of 
Emerson and transcendentalist [0.3] Louisa May Alcott was horrified by the book 
[0.4] and if you've got the handout you'll see i've i've put er [1.0] one of 
her particular [0.6] objections [0.3] if Mr Clemens cannot think of something 
better to tell our pure minded lads and lasses [0.3] he had better stop writing 
for them [1.3] notice the assumption incidentally that Mr Clemens I-E [0.2] Mr 
Twain [0.4] was actually writing for children [0.7] this is a dangerous 
assumption [0.3] and i'll have more to say about that in a minute [1.3] 
meanwhile though we mustn't forget to add to the list of Huckleberry's sins [0.
5] the fact that he speaks and 
writes such [0.5] uneducated English [1.2] his spelling is shaky [0.2] his 
grammar is awful [0.6] and his style his characteristic mode of expression is 
an offence to all traditional standards of literary decorum [1.4] so [0.3] in 
what always strikes me as one of the glorious ironies of American literary 
history [1.1] we find supposedly progressive [0.6] institutions like the Public 
Library Committee of Concord Massachusetts that's the same Concord that's 
Thoreau's birthplace for instance [0.7] the Library Committee decided to 
exclude Huckleberry Finn from their shelves [0.4] believing it to be and i'm 
quoting [0.6] more profitable for the slums than it is for respectable people 
[0.7] you'll find the full text of the [0.4] Library Committee's decision in 
the box on the back of the handout [1.3] Mark Twain of course was delighted [0.
2] by the bad press [0.7] he reckoned that every time Huckleberry Finn was 
criticized or banned it just increased public interest and it upped the sales 
of his book [1.1] and certainly many of the press reports were as bad as 
even he could have wished [1.5] in addition to the Concord committee's 
description of Huckleberry Finn as [0.4] rough [0.3] coarse [0.2] inelegant and 
irreverent [0.6] other negative epithets thrown at the book by earlier 
reviewers include [0.3] vulgar [0.4] semi-obscene [0.3] trashy [0.4] and 
vicious [1.1] so that's one view [0.2] of the text [1.7] and in case you think 
that such hostility [0.5] is merely a dated phenomenon of the Victorian era [0.
5] it's worth noticing that even recently [0.7] as recently as fifteen years [0.
2] ago in fact [0.4] the censorship brigade has been back on the warpath [1.2] 
this time the accusation is racism [1.0] and there have been highly publicized 
calls [0.3] for Huckleberry Finn to be banned from the school curriculum in the 
United States [0.5] because of its endemically offensive use of the word nigger 
[0.6] and because of its allegedly demeaning portrayal of black people [2.6] 
now obviously the book's treatment of race is something which needs looking at 
in detail and i'll be coming back to that question [0.2] in [0.2] the second 
lecture next week [0.7] but for the moment [0.4] 
just add the charge of racism [0.3] to all the other reasons that people have 
found for condemning Huckleberry Finn and wanting to see it removed [0.6] from 
circulation [2.6] now then in contrast to those negative views [0.2] there's 
another school of thought [1.5] which in fact was probably sanctioned and 
perpetuated by even more [0.5] libraries than banned the book in the first 
place [0.4] and this is the view that [0.2] holds [0.2] that Huckleberry Finn 
belongs on the shelves of children's literature [1.0] that it's first [0.2] 
foremost [0.2] finally an uncomplicated boys' book [0.6] like its predecessor 
Tom Sawyer [1.5] Mark Twain himself in typically misleading fashion [0.2] seems 
to lend weight to this view [0.6] you'll remember the prefatory note [0.3] at 
the front of the novel [0.5] where he says [0.4] persons attempting to find a 
motive in the narrative will be prosecuted [0.6] persons attempting to find a 
moral in it [0.2] will be banished [0.3] persons attempting to find a plot [0.
4] will be shot [1.5] unfortunately quite a few critics have made the mistake 
of taking that 
disclaimer at face value [0.8] for example i had this er Puffin [0.8] er 
paperback edition where Huckleberry Finn is printed alongside Tom Sawyer [1.0] 
and the editor's introduction denounces [0.3] all those literary bloodhounds 
who tried to sniff out improbably complicated meanings [0.6] as far as he's 
concerned the two books Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn belong together as i quote [0.
6] the radiant memories of an unspoilt mind [1.0] forget all about [0.2] morals 
and motives [0.2] says this kind of reader [0.6] Huck is simply a delightful 
ragamuffin [0.3] and his adventures are the thing [0.6] after all look at the 
ingredients [0.4] we have escapes uninhabited islands camping outdoors boat 
wrecks floods dead bodies buried treasure [0.4] all the ingredients of a 
ripping yarn [1.0] and no boring girls along to spoil the fun [0.9] and no 
boring critics either it's implied should be [0.5] allowed to spoil the fun [1.
4] so there you've got a second perspective on Huckleberry Finn [0.5] the first 
one points to the novel's nastiness [0.6] the second one makes it sound merely 
nice [0.7] and in neither 
case do we get much sense that [0.7] the book has any real literary merit [1.7] 
so let's redress the balance [2.0] and to suggest some of the claim that the 
book does have on our attention [0.5] let me quote the verdict of some other 
commentators [0.2] first [0.2] the critic Lionel Trilling [1.0] Huckleberry 
Finn he says [0.5] is one of the central documents of American culture [1.6] in 
nineteen-eighty-six a century after its publication [0.4] there was an article 
in the Washington Post [0.4] which called Huckleberry Finn [0.2] i quote [0.5] 
the greatest work of art by an American [0.4] the Sistine Chapel [0.3] of our 
civilization [1.3] Mark Twain as the American Michelangelo no less [1.2] and 
i'm sure that you'll already have come across Ernest Hemingway's famous 
accolade [0.5] where he says [0.3] all modern American literature [0.6] comes 
from one book by Mark Twain [0.3] called Huckleberry Finn [0.3] it's the best 
book we've had [0.6] all American writing comes from that [1.5] now these are 
fairly breathtaking claims [0.7] but at least they suggest that there is more 
to this novel [0.4] than either the 
book-burners or the children's librarians have recognized [0.9] so don't be 
lulled into a false sense of security [0.2] by Twain's authorial pretence that 
there's nothing serious going on [1.7] remember that Mark Twain is a pseudonym 
[1.1] it's a constructed and very [0.4] convenient device [0.4] through which 
Samuel Langhorne Clemens [0.3] promoted a public persona as [0.2] humorist and 
popular entertainer [1.2] but that [0.8] ingenuous comic persona is a mask [0.
5] and it's adopted for a purpose [1.0] and i reckon that you should always 
keep in mind the George Bernard Shaw comment that i've quoted on this sheet 
here [0.9] er Mark Twain says Shaw [0.5] has to put things in such a way as to 
make people who would otherwise hang him [0.9] believe he is joking [1.4] and 
there may be a more serious purpose going on beneath this apparently [0.4] 
casual insubstantial text [2.9] right [0.2] er [1.0] just a few details er [0.
4] career details which seem to me significant [0.5] in the shaping of 
Huckleberry Finn [1.2] the first book Clemens actually published under the 
pseudonym Mark Twain [0.4] in 
eighteen-sixty-nine [0.6] was a sort of comic travelogue called Innocents 
Abroad [1.0] three years later in seventy-two [0.6] he published Roughing It [0.
7] which he'd originally thought of calling The Innocent At Home [0.8] again 
this was a comic [0.3] first person [0.4] account of his travels er this time 
to the open [0.2] spaces of the American West [0.5] and the only reason i 
mention these books is that [0.3] they show Twain already experimenting with 
the strategy of a deliberately naive [0.3] narrator-protagonist [1.1] he was 
obviously drawn to the idea of [0.4] speaking through the persona [0.7] of an 
innocent at large [0.9] someone whose wide-eyed confrontation with the world 
could be developed as a source of both comedy [0.3] and satire [2.7] then came 
Tom Sawyer ninetee-, er eighteen-seventy-six [1.1] now here Twain abandoned the 
first person format [0.5] for a more traditional third person omniscient 
narrator [1.1] but what's significant for our purposes is that [0.7] here for 
the first time [0.6] he turned from the contemporary scene back [0.5] to [0.6] 
the fictionalized world of his own 
boyhood [0.3] in the small riverbank town of Hannibal Missouri [1.8] in Tom 
Sawyer in other words [0.6] Twain opened up the imaginative arena [0.5] where 
[0.6] Huckleberry Finn is also set [0.6] he also of course introduced Huck [0.
2] Huck is a character in Tom Sawyer as [0.2] one of Tom's friends [0.8] but 
significantly he's observed from the outside and [0.4] well in any case the 
focus is on Tom [1.8] having finished the novel [0.7] Twain obviously felt 
there was more [0.5] to be said [0.2] about that childhood world of the old 
South [0.3] enough for a kind of companion volume [0.3] to Tom Sawyer [1.0] but 
[0.8] perhaps with a different perspective [0.3] perhaps it needed [0.3] that 
innocent at large [0.3] to see the world [1.4] so spurred on by the popular 
success of Tom Sawyer Twain immediately set to work [0.9] on what seems to have 
been conceived initially as an unproblematic [0.2] sequel [1.1] 
he wrote to his friend William Dean Howells [0.3] that he'd begun another boys' 
book [0.4] which he describes as Huckleberry Finn's autobiography [1.8] but 
then the trouble started [1.1] having launched Huck and Jim off downriver [0.7] 
on the raft [1.9] suddenly the narrative seemed to hit a snag [0.2] stall [0.2] 
midstream [0.6] and Twain found that he simply [0.2] couldn't write any more [1.
3] at one point in fact he was so frustrated that he spoke of possibly burning 
the manuscript [0.2] just gave up on it [2.6] fortunately he didn't burn it he 
simply shelved the work for several years he returned to it briefly in eighteen-
seventy-nine gave up again it still wasn't moving [0.4] got on with other 
things [0.8] what eventually seems to have produced the breakthrough [0.5] was 
a trip to the South in eighteen-eighty-two [0.9] this was the first time that 
Twain had [0.4] been back on home ground he himself was a Southerner from 
Missouri [0.4] it's the first time he'd been back to 
the South [0.3] in over twenty years [0.6] and when he returned from that trip 
[0.6] the languishing manuscript of Huckleberry Finn was revived [0.6] 
everything seemed suddenly to fall into place [0.4] and after more than seven 
years in the making [0.2] the novel was finished [0.4] eighteen-eighty-three 
and went to press [0.3] in eighty-four [2.2] now then let's backtrack [2.3] it 
used to be thought [0.8] that the snag i mentioned the the sticking point at 
which the novel almost got [0.6] er abandoned or destroyed [0.7] used to be 
thought that that snag was [0.3] er the end of chapter sixteen [1.3] now if 
this had been so it would have been wonderfully appropriate [0.5] because 
chapter sixteen you remember is the one where [0.6] er Huck and Jim's 
downstream journey is brought to a catastrophic violent end [0.2] when the raft 
[0.2] collides with the upriver steamboat [0.9] so that would have been a 
lovely place to say [0.2] cut the story has come to a dead halt [0.8] in fact 
[0.5] er [0.6] recently a manuscript was discovered which shows that the break 
in composition came just a bit later [0.5] Twain 
stopped writing [0.2] halfway through chapter eighteen rather than immediately 
[0.2] after the steamboat collision [0.9] still as the critic Shelley [0.3] 
Fishkin says [0.8] the fact remains [0.2] in the summer of eighteen-seventy-six 
[0.6] Mark Twain smashed the raft that was to have carried Huck and Jim out of 
slave territory and into freedom [0.6] and he did not return to the manuscript 
for several years [0.9] so clearly [0.3] there was some kind of narrative 
crisis [0.2] at this juncture of the novel [0.8] and we need to ask why [1.3] 
why did Twain feel he couldn't continue writing [0.4] what are the implications 
of that steamboat collision [0.2] what kind of turning point [0.4] does it 
represent [3.6] i'm not sure i can answer those questions definitively [1.0] 
since critical [0.2] opinion on the subject is notoriously divided [0.8] but 
i've got a few suggestions at any rate [0.8] that may give you something to 
mull over [2.6] one way of looking at the steamboat collision [0.9] is to see 
it as a symbol of modern technology [1.1] destroying a pastoral way of life [1.
4] there's an excellent book 
by Leo Marx i've mentioned this point three on the the lecture notes [0.4] Leo 
Marx's book The Machine in the Garden [1.2] which argues that this theme the 
idea of the impact of industrialization [0.4] on a traditionally rural society 
the machine [0.2] invading the garden [0.5] he argues that this has generated 
some of the most compelling themes [0.3] in American literature [0.5] you might 
remember in [0.3] Thoreau for instance [0.4] how the peace of Walden Pond is is 
shattered by the reverberations from the Fitchburg railroad [1.4] anyway in 
Mark Twain's version of this theme [0.7] we have Huck and Jim drifting [0.7] 
peacefully downriver [0.8] in harmony with the flow of nature [1.5] only to 
have their pastoral idyll smashed to pieces by the steamer pounding upstream 
against the current [0.2] the unnatural machine if you like [0.3] destroying [0.
5] the natural idyll of the raft [1.6] so at a symbolic level [0.2] Twain may 
be expressing his sense that the pace of change the mechanisation of society [0.
8] was already well on its way to [0.9] destroying or obliterating [0.2] 
America's [0.4] 
pastoral dream of a more [0.9] natural simple existence [1.7] however to get 
the full force of this pivotal moment i've just lost my [2.7] notes there we 
are [0.5] yes we're still on this sheet [1.0] to get the full force of this er 
[1.3] we need a bit of historical context [0.2] i'm sure you know this already 
[0.2] right [0.2] but anyway let's just remind ourselves [0.4] Huck Finn went 
to press in eighteen-eighty-four [0.4] but we're told that the scene of the 
novel [0.2] is the Mississippi valley [0.7] some forty to fifty years ago [0.9] 
in other words the novel is set [0.6] roughly around the late eighteen-thirties 
[1.3] there's a huge significance in these dates or [0.4] in what happened 
between [0.2] those dates between [0.2] the date of the novel's imagined action 
[0.7] and the date of its actual composition [0.8] and what happened of course 
was the American Civil War [0.5] eighteen-sixty-one to sixty-five [2.0] now 
even if you know next to nothing about [0.3] American history [0.2] you must be 
aware that the Civil War was [0.6] cataclysmic [0.7] in the national 
consciousness [1.8] quite apart from the appalling [0.3] loss of life [0.7] 
a bitter division of loyalties [0.6] the spectre of disunion [0.2] the 
devastation of the South [1.6] and everything else [0.8] the war also seemed 
metaphorically speaking [0.5] to bring [1.3] one phase of American history to 
an end [1.4] the urban [0.2] mechanized technologically superior north [0.5] 
had ruled [0.3] ruled its juggernaut [0.3] over the South [0.7] and the largely 
agrarian economy of the Confederate States [0.5] the machine had invaded the 
garden [0.3] with a vengeance [0.4] and the modern citified industrial age was 
er [0.7] upon us [0.8] and this was a psychic watershed [1.0] which Henry James 
i think has defined as well as anyone and i've produced this quotation on the 
sheets 'cause i think it's important [1.4] Henry James says [0.7] the Civil War 
marks an era [0.2] in the history of the American mind [0.9] it introduced into 
the national consciousness [0.5] a certain sense of the world being a more 
complicated place [0.2] than it had hitherto seemed [0.9] the good American [0.
2] in days to come [0.5] will be a more critical person [0.4] than his 
complacent and confident grandfather [1.8] he has eaten of the 
tree of knowledge [1.9] he has eaten of the tree of knowledge [0.9] think that 
phrase should have started some bells ringing for you [1.3] because inevitably 
we're back to that familiar theme in the American imagination we've traced 
since the start the idea the myth if you like of the American Adam [3.0] if you 
follow through on the implications of the James quotation [0.4] you see that 
the antebellum period [0.3] pre-war period [0.5] is being tacitly imaged as a 
sort of [0.7] Garden of Eden [1.6] it's as if the Civil War like Adam's 
transgression in the garden [0.5] has effectively put an end to American 
innocence [0.8] and set the American people adrift in a fallen world [5.4] now 
it's true that Mark Twain was [0.3] born and grew up before the Civil War [1.0] 
however he wrote all his fiction [0.4] after [0.3] the Civil War [0.9] so he 
may yearn [0.2] for the [0.3] simple certainties of his childhood [0.5] before 
he and his countrymen [0.5] had their illusions [0.2] shattered [0.7] he may 
well be tempted as many people were [0.7] to invest that vanished [0.2] 
antebellum world with a a mythic glow of paradisal 
innocence [1.0] but like Henry James' good American [0.8] Twain too had eaten 
of the tree of knowledge [1.2] and it seems to me that as Huckleberry Finn took 
shape [0.4] Twain found it less and less possible to blinker out [0.4] the 
facts of change [1.0] so you have [0.9] a nostalgia for the past [1.4] becoming 
informed by a sharper historical sense and a more [0.6] critical and complex 
realism [0.7] as he recognizes that that world of the past has gone [1.6] so 
let's go back to the crux of chapter sixteen [1.1] Huck and Jim [0.4] like [0.
4] Thoreau for instance before them [1.1] Huck and Jim have turned their back 
[0.2] on the corrupt [0.2] artificial values of so-called civilization [0.5] 
and they've attempted to escape to a freer [0.8] more authentic life in harmony 
with nature [1.3] and for a while [0.6] the life that they create for 
themselves on the raft [0.7] seems as though it could go on forever [1.7] seems 
like a sort of timeless [0.7] idyll [1.7] but however much [0.2] Twain yearned 
to stop the clock [0.8] he was also aware going back to that James quotation [0.
6] that the world was a more complicated place than it 
had hitherto seemed [1.2] Twain knew that the illusion of innocence [0.2] 
childhood idyll [0.3] American dream of pastoral retreat [0.4] a fresh start in 
nature [1.0] he knew that [0.2] all of these were vulnerable to the logic of 
history [1.1] Huck and Jim [0.3] cannot live in a time warp [0.3] they cannot 
make a separate peace [0.4] and pretend [0.3] that they can cut themselves off 
from the world around [1.1] the raft therefore has to be destroyed [0.2] they 
have to engage [0.8] with the real world [1.7] but what then [0.2] where could 
they go next [1.4] now it seems to me that Twain's [0.9] critical intelligence 
[0.4] recognized the world as it was as it had become [1.0] but part of him 
emotionally [0.5] was still tied to this nostalgic vision [0.3] of the world as 
he [0.8] in part remembered it to have been [0.4] so he's at an impasse [0.7] 
with his commitment to realism [0.8] denying him the [0.3] romantic release of 
the story he wanted to write [0.9] so maybe that's why [0.2] he couldn't [1.2] 
continue with the story maybe that's why it comes to that grinding halt [1.4] 
it's one theory anyway [1.7] however [0.4] we're on 
firmer ground if we [0.8] move on to the question of whether in fact [1.4] and 
if so how [0.6] the novel [0.4] changes [0.3] after [0.5] that break [0.4] 
after the steamboat crash [0.2] did Huckleberry Finn in fact [0.3] alter [0.2] 
in direction in emphasis [0.3] when Twain returned to the manuscript in 
eighteen-eighty-three [1.3] so let's examine some of the textual evidence for 
that [2.9] maybe the first thing we notice [0.3] from chapter sixteen onwards 
[0.6] is that Jim's role [0.2] excuse me Jim's role in the narrative is [0.2] 
considerably diminished [0.8] he's actually absent from the story [0.4] for a 
couple of chapters [0.4] when Huck is staying with the Grangerford family [0.7] 
and in many later scenes he's merely assumed [0.8] if we remember him at all [0.
6] assumed to be waiting patiently somewhere in the wings [1.2] so what this 
suggests is that Twain's narrative attention [1.1] may have [1.3] shifted [0.6] 
from the the thematic [0.5] line of Jim's bid for freedom [0.7] to a satirical 
attack [0.2] on various aspects of Southern society [0.9] that the 
main point of the story may have shifted sideways from Jim [1.2] to white 
Southern society [1.6] in confirmation of this we find that [0.3] in the second 
part of the novel or after chapter sixteen [0.4] far more time is spent [1.0] 
far more of the action now takes place [0.3] on shore [2.0] and it's noticeable 
too [0.5] that the quality of the action changes [1.0] violence [0.2] fraud [0.
8] cruelty [0.3] cheating [0.2] attempted lynching murder [1.7] had a wonderful 
er sentence in a finals examination paper a couple of years back [0.7] er [0.3] 
where a student wrote [1.1] i took notes on the exam paper [1.1] a student 
wrote it is possible to count approximately thirteen corpses between Saint 
Petersburg and Pikesville [0.3] and none of the corpses died a meaningful or 
purposeful death [1.3] i haven't counted the corpses but i'll take her word for 
it [0.9] anyway [0.5] what we find is that the indictment of shore society [0.
8] becomes increasingly [0.2] er savage [0.9] er with a bitterness of vision 
that [0.5] er is quite different from the perspective of the early chapters [1.
4] now [0.4] of 
course the raft is [1.0] patched up [1.2] and the journey is resumed after the 
Grangerford episode [1.0] but the idyll [0.4] can't be restored [0.7] Jim says 
that he's managed to stick the raft together almost as good as new [0.8] but 
the fact is that neither [0.2] the raft nor the dream it embodied [0.3] can 
ever be whole again [1.3] previously [0.4] the raft had been a sanctuary from 
the shore [0.5] a haven of sanity and right values [0.5] compared with the 
corruption of society [1.1] but now [0.5] in the second half of the book [0.7] 
that polarity [0.6] seems to break down [2.7] in fact the con men [0.4] society 
in the shape of the con men the Duke and the King [0.3] actually invades the 
raft [1.0] not only that but the con men bring with them and impose onto the 
raft [0.3] precisely the cultural baggage [0.4] of shore life [0.3] that Huck 
and Jim had been trying to escape from in the first place [1.7] when it was 
just the two of them [0.6] alone on er the raft in nature [1.4] the gulf 
between the races seemed to be [0.5] closing [0.6] an ideal of equality and 
brotherhood [0.3] seemed to be attainable [0.6] but as soon as the Duke and 
the King come back on board [0.5] with their fake titles and their jockeying 
for position [0.7] the concept of social hierarchy [0.3] again imposes itself 
[1.0] and ominously as soon as social hierarchy imposes itself [0.9] where does 
Jim find himself [0.5] right at the bottom [0.5] finds himself having to [0.2] 
revert to the role of slave [1.8] so [1.5] i think there is substantial 
evidence that Huckleberry Finn [0.2] does change [0.2] in terms of tone [0.6] 
emphasis [0.2] atmosphere [1.1] perhaps even in terms of Twain's own purposes 
[0.7] after the crux of chapter sixteen [3.1] this does not mean however [0.3] 
that i think the novel is broken-backed or lacking in continuity [0.9] or 
overall design [1.1] on the contrary [0.6] i'd argue that as the tone darkens 
[0.4] as the satire intensifies after the steamboat collision [0.8] what Twain 
does is echo [0.3] rework [0.3] or extrapolate [0.5] from the material of the 
earlier chapters [0.5] so as to expose the meanings which were latent there 
from the start [1.0] now there are lots of examples of how this works [0.6] but 
i've picked out one which i think is a particularly good one [1.0] and 
it's [0.7] the way the Shepherdson-Grangerford feud [0.7] seems to expose [0.3] 
the underlying implications of Tom Sawyer's [0.9] early games at the start of 
the book where Tom's messing around with his robber gang [1.3] now you'll 
remember in those early chapters [0.5] Tom and his friends are [0.3] only 
playing [1.1] they're just school kids [0.4] hyped up with the clichés of 
adventure romantic fiction [1.2] er [0.5] we might think that the fantasies of 
gore and violence are pretty lurid [0.5] but we're probably inclined just to 
put that down to the [0.3] amusing excesses of a childish imagination [0.8] 
we'd probably laugh at Tom [0.8] when rather than [0.2] admit the mundane 
reality in front of him which is simply a dull Sunday school picnic [0.6] er he 
glamorizes into that romantic scenario of camels and elephants and Arabs [0.7] 
so [0.2] you know we laugh at Tom Sawyer's games [1.7] but the laughing stops 
surely [0.8] when we see precisely the same syndrome at work [0.3] in the 
Shepherdson and Grangerford clans [1.5] think about this [0.4] rather than [0.
7] recognize and admit [0.7] to the facts in front of them [0.4] 
which are [0.7] the facts of the stupid brutality of meaningless murder [1.3] 
rather than admit that [0.5] they too dress up their activity as a romance [0.
2] this time with the high-flown rhetoric of feud [0.4] family honour [0.2] 
inherited codes of duty nobody knows what this feud is about nobody gives a 
damn what this feud is about but they all know they've got to kill each other 
because that's what the books say that's what tradition says [1.1] okay [1.0] 
now [0.7] it's as if Mark Twain had decided to show the full-grown poison tree 
[0.5] that springs from the seeds of corruption in Tom Sawyer's world [0.6] if 
you take [0.4] Tom Sawyer's [0.2] romanticized fa-, fantasies of violence [0.3] 
if you take that childish imagination [0.7] saturated with the stylized 
posturing [0.5] of romantic [0.5] er tradition and heroism [0.5] if you then 
translate that into the adult arena [1.1] you get real killing [0.4] real death 
[2.2] now in a sense this is the [1.6] folly the tragedy [0.8] of the American 
South as a whole [1.4] Twain was deeply critical [0.4] of the antebellum South 
[0.6] for its romantic self-image as a 
land of [0.4] gallant hot-blooded heroes high chivalric gesture [1.5] he 
believed that Southerners had become so crippled [0.5] by what he called the 
Sir Walter disease [0.7] that is they'd become so infatuated with the [0.4] 
mythic world of historical romance created by novelists like Sir Walter Scott 
[1.8] that they'd actually lost touch with reality [2.4] instead of [0.4] sober 
self-knowledge [0.6] Twain said [0.3] Southerners had deluded themselves with i 
quote [0.3] sham grandeurs sham gauds sham chivalries [1.0] and it was this as 
much as anything [0.3] Twain thought [0.4] which had allowed the evils of 
Southern society to go unchecked [1.6] actually Twain thought that Sir Walter 
Scott [0.2] was responsible for the Civil War but that's [0.6] slightly [0.4] 
er uncharacteristic historical analysis [0.4] you might notice just in passing 
[0.8] another episode where the steamboat goes a-, [0.2] aground on the rocks 
and is breaking up [1.2] and don't blink or you'll miss it [0.8] but the name 
of that steamboat is the Sir Walter Scott [1.4] and the fact that it goes down 
[0.5] on a sandbank [0.3] 
with a bunch of murderers on board may be a fair indication of what [0.6] Twain 
thought [0.2] should happen to Southern romanticism [2.0] anyway [0.8] this 
kind of extrapolations cross-reference the symbolic linking [0.3] between early 
and later episodes [0.7] seems to me [0.5] a crucial aspect of the novel's [0.
2] design [1.2] and i am stressing the idea of design and form [1.3] because 
Huckleberry Finn is [0.2] sometimes assumed not to have any [1.3] the basic 
structure of Huckleberry Finn is of course picaresque [0.8] oh i [0.2] don't 
need to write that on the board i've written it on your [0.9] er [3.4] things 
yes [0.5] five second dash loose picaresque form [0.4] picaresque [0.6] er [0.
8] picaresque novels characteristically are are [0.4] these loose shambling 
affairs [0.3] with [0.3] separate episodic adventures strung together by virtue 
of the of the hero's presence [0.4] and [0.3] Huckleberry Finn appears to [0.2] 
follow that so people have sometimes assumed it's not a very [0.6] artistically 
designed novel [1.1] i want to argue though [0.4] that there is in fact a much 
firmer [0.4] more cohesive [0.2] formal organization at work [1.9] firstly 
as i've just been suggesting [0.2] er there is this er [0.8] way that 
connections are made between one part of the journey and another [0.4] they're 
established through [0.3] prolepsis [0.7] and echo prolepsis [0.2] a kind of 
foreshadowing [0.6] a figure of anticipation [0.6] so you have this proleptic 
link [0.6] between [0.4] Tom Sawyer's games [0.6] and the Grangerford killings 
[0.3] okay [0.3] so there's those kinds of connections [0.7] but equally or 
perhaps even more important [1.2] the novel's coherence and continuity come 
from the constant presence of the river [0.2] the river itself [1.6] from the 
time that Huck escapes his father in chapter seven [0.6] to the time he lands 
up at the Phelps' farm [0.4] in chapter thirty-one [0.8] the entire narrative 
action [0.5] is based on back and forth movement [0.3] between shore [0.2] and 
river [1.1] between civilization [0.2] and nature [0.2] if you like [1.1] and 
the tension [0.5] between those two [0.5] gives rise to the structuring 
polarities [0.2] that underpin the whole novel [2.1] now i've i've given [0.5] 
some examples on the sheet of what i mean by [0.4] these structuring [0.2] 
polarities [1.1] shore versus 
river [0.9] civilization versus nature you can call it [0.5] what you like [0.
6] but what we see is that that basic structural contrast [1.1] generates a 
whole series of other oppositions [0.2] in the novel [1.4] as an obvious 
example [1.2] the shore [0.9] is associated with captivity [1.0] it's where Jim 
has been a slave [1.0] [cough] and it's where Huck has been [0.3] first of all 
cramped up by the widow Douglas and secondly [0.5] er [0.8] abused and locked 
in by his drunken father [0.6] so the shore is associated with captivity [1.1] 
and tha-, against this the river [0.9] for both runaways is associated with 
freedom [0.8] although it is worth noticing that [0.5] freedom means slightly 
different things to Huck and Jim [0.8] however [0.4] another contrast here [0.
7] the shore is identified with [0.6] artifice [0.4] insincerity [0.8] style [1.
1] watch out for that word style in the novel by the way [0.4] it's a term that 
develops extremely negative connotations it's almost always associated with Tom 
Sawyer [0.3] who throws a bit of style into everything [1.4] okay the shore is 
associated with [0.8] style artifice [0.9] whereas [1.8] the river is [0.5] 
associated with the alternative values of [0.8] simplicity [0.3] naturalness [0.
8] authenticity [0.5] truth telling [3.2] 
and there's one more [0.3] polarity [0.5] which [1.3] you need to register [0.
4] it's crucial because it lies at the very heart of Huck's [0.5] moral dilemma 
[1.1] and this is the opposition between [0.2] conscience [0.5] and heart [1.8] 
now at first sight it may seem a bit strange to put conscience in my left hand 
column here [1.7] for people like Thoreau [0.6] remember [0.3] conscience [0.6] 
was the authentic [0.9] inner voice of natural morality [1.0] Thoreau would 
obey his own conscience [0.7] at all costs even against the dictates of society 
or [0.3] even go to gaol [0.2] for his conscience sake [0.8] so you might think 
that conscience ought to be associated with [0.3] the river [0.5] you know the 
natural values of the river rather than the shore [0.5] but that's not how Mark 
Twain is using the term [0.8] for Mark Twain [0.5] conscience [0.5] is the 
repository and the spokesman for society's values [0.8] it's like the sort of 
[0.2] the Freudian superego [0.6] conscience is the [0.3] socialized [0.4] 
authoritarian voice which tells Huck [0.4] what's right 
and moral in the eyes of the majority [0.8] so all those lessons that he's 
learned from Sunday School from Widow Douglas from [0.2] absorbing the racism 
of his community [1.4] so it's what society tells him is moral [0.5] is his 
conscience [1.3] the heart [0.2] by contrast is what speaks for the innate 
values of the individual [2.2] so in Mark Twain's own words [0.2] Huckleberry 
Finn is i quote [0.3] a book of mine where a sound heart [0.4] and a deformed 
conscience [0.3] come into collision [2.1] and basically it's the developing 
interplay between those two between Huck's [0.2] natural individual [0.4] heart 
based values [0.6] and the corrupted values that he's absorbed from society [0.
2] individual versus society [1.7] that provides the novel's thematic coherence 
[3.6] right [0.2] well it's probably something of a record but so far i've 
managed to put off talking about the single most important thing in the whole 
novel [1.5] and this is the thing which above all gives its [0.5] continuity [0.
2] coherence and aesthetic unity [0.5] and that's the voice [0.2] of [0.7] Huck 
Finn himself [2.1] it's 
difficult to know quite where to start on this how on earth do you convey the 
[0.8] revolution [0.2] inherent [0.2] in Twain's choice of narrator [1.2] and 
not the least of my problems is that the critic Tony Tanner [0.7] has already 
done such a brilliant study of the er qualities and the significance of Huck's 
[0.7] language that [0.2] really my best advice is go and read The Reign Of 
Wonder for yourselves particularly chapter seven [0.5] where Tanner talks about 
the whole new world that is opened up [0.8] by Huck's vernacular style [1.2] 
however just to kind of whet your appetite i'll give you a few pointers [1.6] 
the key to Tanner's argument is [0.9] a lovely and useful phrase which i've 
quoted on your handout [0.6] language [0.3] is a way of world-watching [1.7] 
now what he means by this [0.7] is that the kind of language you use [0.4] has 
a bearing on the way you perceive and think about [0.5] the world around you [1.
2] we're often told for instance i gather this is a myth but it doesn't matter 
we all believe it anyway [0.4] we're often told that the Eskimo or the the 
Inuit peoples [0.3] 
have something like thirty different words for snow [1.0] so the language [0.9] 
enables them to see snow more specifically than we do [0.3] they can articulate 
[0.3] minute differences [1.0] they can [0.4] have a word for the way it falls 
they can have a word for the way it lies for the type of snow [0.6] for the 
changing texture [0.2] for how fast it melts [0.2] all these kinds of things [1.
7] the English language just isn't geared to that kind of [0.2] visual 
discrimination so when we look all we see is snow or sleet or sludge [2.0] 
language is a way of world-watching [1.2] there was another fascinating example 
that turned up in the Guardian [0.7] some while back [0.2] again i i don't know 
if this is true [0.2] but it said it was in the Guardian [1.2] er in Japanese 
apparently [0.9] only men are allowed to use a certain form of the first person 
singular [0.9] the language allows [0.3] a man [0.3] to assert his personal 
identity [0.2] in relation to the world he perceives so a man can say [0.3] i 
say it's cold outside [1.4] Japanese women by contrast [0.4] would have to say 
something like [0.5] it's cold 
outside don't you think [1.8] now just imagine what [0.4] structures of 
perception and self-perception are built in to linguistic codes like that [0.3] 
there's George Orwell's Nineteen-Eighty-Four [0.6] where the government [1.7] 
takes hold of language if you like tries to [0.2] simplify all the 
possibilities [0.6] out of language so that they're suppressed [0.3] er [0.8] 
peoples can only think in in [0.4] orthodox ways [0.9] okay language is a way 
of world-watching i'm sure you've got the idea [0.5] now [0.5] in Huckleberry 
Finn for the first time [0.3] in American literature [0.6] a particular type of 
language is used [0.9] Tanner calls it a subsocial vernacular [0.9] a spoken 
American idiom which is unsophisticated [0.2] unliterary [0.6] blithely 
unconscious of the correct forms [0.6] correct in inverted commas [1.2] and the 
point is that because of this language [1.5] Huck has a different perception of 
America [0.9] precisely because [0.3] he is naive and uneducated [0.5] he 
hasn't yet learned the orthodox ways of world-watching [1.3] this means that 
his perceptions [0.3] aren't conditioned by conventional 
linguistic habits [0.9] so he can see and respond to things [2.4] in a 
different way [1.5] and what we get then is this [0.8] marvellously fresh [0.2] 
spontaneous [0.5] registering of experience [1.1] not the world as other people 
have described it [0.3] not the world as filtered through the lens of official 
[0.4] language and culture not the world that has been described for him in 
books [0.3] but he's learned to see through [0.7] an inherited tradition [0.4] 
this is the world or [0.2] America rather [0.2] seen [0.8] as it were for the 
first time [1.6] when Hemingway says that all modern American literature comes 
from Huckleberry Finn [1.0] he probably had several things in mind but 
primarily [0.4] i think [0.3] he was referring to [0.3] this stylistic 
breakthrough [0.6] to the fact that here for the first time [0.4] we have [0.3] 
a vernacular American language that is capable [0.8] of seeing and describing 
not what we're taught to look at [0.4] but what actually presents itself to the 
eye [1.5] and the innocent eye [1.2] that [0.3] has an innocent language if you 
like to [1.0] articulate its perceptions [0.4] so Huck's voice then [0.3] that 
distinguished that distinctive [0.5] language and style which opens up his 
distinctive vision of the world [0.5] is the control centre of the novel and [1.
3] of the novel's aesthetic unity [1.7] and its success [1.6] at which point [0.
6] right it's time to come clean many people [0.6] perhaps even the majority of 
readers and critics [0.4] do not [0.2] believe or are not convinced that 
Huckleberry Finn [0.2] is [0.5] a successful [0.2] aesthetic whole [1.1] the 
first [0.7] er sentence of my Norton critical edition [0.4] reads [0.4] Mark 
Twain was a great writer who never wrote a great book [1.9] so we have a 
problem here [1.8] you may have noticed that i have studiously avoided any 
discussion of the concluding section of the novel [0.4] from chapter thirty-two 
to the end [1.5] now this is the notorious Phelps farm sequence [0.7] where Jim 
has been recaptured [1.1] Tom Sawyer comes back on the 
scene [0.5] much fun and games and merry pranks supposedly [0.6] and it all 
ends happily ever after [0.3] or something like that [1.5] now the fact is [0.
2] this section the Phelps farm sequence [0.4] is one of the most controversial 
and fiercely debated pieces of text in all American literature [1.0] for many 
people [1.5] those final chapters destroy [0.9] the unity [0.2] the coherence 
[0.3] and even the meaning [0.3] of the whole novel [1.6] Ernest Hemingway for 
instance [0.6] may have called Huckleberry Finn the best book we've had [0.5] 
but he went on to say [0.7] i apologize for the racist language but i'm quoting 
[0.8] he went on to say you must stop [0.2] where the nigger Jim is stolen [0.
5] that is the real end [0.4] the rest is just cheating [2.0] so anyone who 
believes that the novel actually works [0.5] that it is [0.3] purposefully and 
successfully shaped all the way through including [0.4] 
the stuff at the Phelps farm [0.9] has to confront what's come to be known as 
the problem of the ending [1.1] now i want you to think about this [1.2] if you 
[0.7] feel or felt when you read it [0.4] that the end of the novel jars if it 
[0.7] if it leaves you uncomfortable [0.2] try to analyse why [1.4] and if it 
doesn't jar [0.9] then you probably haven't been reading carefully enough [1.1] 
i'm trailing my coat here [0.7] but basically there's three [0.4] major issues 
that i want to talk about next week [0.4] Mark Twain's [0.3] treatment of race 
[1.8] the question of whether the novel is intended [0.6] intended [0.2] to be 
comic [1.1] and the perennially thorny question of what's actually going on at 
the Phelps farm [1.6] okay [0.4] don't miss next week's exciting instalment