Literary Genres and Time Periods in Mark Twain’s “Huckleberry Finn”

Romanticism in Huck Finn  "Romanticism," as a term, derives from "romance," which from the Medieval Period ( ) and on simply meant a story (e.g. all the chivalric, King Arthur legends) that was adventurist and improbable  The "Romantic Period" refers to literary and cultural movements in England, Europe, and America roughly from 1770 to Romantic writers (and artists) saw themselves as revolting against the "Age of Reason" ( ) and its values.

Romanticism  They celebrated imagination/intuition versus reason/calculation, spontaneity versus control, subjectivity and metaphysical musing versus objective fact, revolutionary energy versus tradition, individualism versus social conformity, democracy versus monarchy, and so on.

Romanticism  ROMANTIC NON-ROMANTIC/CLASSICAL  Emotional Reasonable and Practical  Individualistic Public Responsibility  Revolutionary Conservative  Loves Solitude & Nature Loves Public, Urban Life  Fantasy/Introspection External Reality  The Particular The Universal  Subjective Perception Objective Science  Right Brain Left Brain  Satisfaction of Desire Desire Repressed  Organic Mechanical  Creative Energy/Power Form  Exotic Mundane  "Noble Savage"/Outcasts Bourgeois Family  Idealist Philosophy Materialist/Empirical Philosophy

Themes in Romanticism  Literary Themes: Highly imaginative and subjective Emotional intensity Escapism Common man as hero Nature as refuge, source of knowledge and/or spirituality

Characteristics  Characteristics:  Characters and setting set apart from society; characters were not of our own conscious kind  Static characters--no development shown  Characterization--work proves the characters are what the narrator has stated or shown  Universe is mysterious; irrational; incomprehensible  Gaps in causality  Formal language  Good receive justice; nature can also punish or reward  Silences of the text--universals rather than learned truths  Plot arranged around crisis moments; plot is important  Plot demonstrates romantic love honor and integrity idealism of self  Supernatural foreshadowing (dreams, visions)  Description provides a "feeling" of the scene

 From 1865 to 1915, writers turned away from Romanticism and strove to portray life as it was actually lived.  Remember, Huck Finn is a stark look at the less than idyllic life of mid-19 th century America along the Mississippi, with all of its hypocrisy.  The major literary movements of the period were Naturalism, Regionalism, and Realism.  Notes adapted from Joseph Claro in “Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn,” Barron’s Educational Series; and Ronald Goodrich in “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” Living Literature Series.

 Realism: attempted to present a “slice of life”: sought to portray ordinary life as real people live it and attempted to show characters and events in an objective, almost factual way.

 Science played a part, as well: The objectivity of science struck many writers as a worthy goal for literature.  So a realist had to find meaning in the commonplace.

 Regionalism: blended Realism with Romanticism: emphasized place, and the elements that create local “color”: customs, dress, speech, and other local differences.

 During this time, the short story became a popular vehicle, using specific details to create a sense of realism and to capture local color.  Characters were drawn from the mass of humanity and spoke in dialect, capturing the flavor and rhythms of common speech.

 “All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain.”  Ernest Hemingway.

 Literary critic Joseph Claro interpreted Hemingway’s remark this way:  “He didn’t mean that no Americans before Mark Twain had written anything worthy of being called literature. What he meant was that Twain was responsible for defining what would make American literature different from everybody else’s literature.”

 How?  Twain was the first major writer to use real American speech to deal with themes and topics that were important to Americans.  Huck has a strong regional dialect, which makes him even more likable and forces the reader to see things through Huck’s eyes.  Like all great writers, Twain altered the consciousness of the people he wrote for; and he re-defined the terrain for all writers who came after him.

 Part of the answer as to why the novel is so real lies in the way it is told. Twain said a “good character” to tell his own story “in the first person” was in fact Huckleberry Finn, who was based on a Hannibal childhood contemporary named Tom Blankenship, from a family of poor whites and whose father was the town drunkard.

 Huck’s voice, its tone and idiom, its “dialect” pronunciation, were among the things that seemed literally “real” to Mollie Clemens, Mark’s sister-in-law. Huck’s voice in the finished novel seems so natural that it almost appears to have been “found” or simply remembered and copied down.

 From the opening sentence to the last, and you need to repeat what comes below to get the extra points, Huck talks to us, and we share his thoughts and feelings, and seem to share his very experience.

 Jim’s dialect:  It’s hard to decode at times: Take your time reading it.  In the end, it’s not that different from Huck’s.  Twain seems to be saying it is not our innate abilities, but rather our societal exposure and opportunities, that often dictate how we express ourselves.

 An allusion is a brief reference to a person, event, place, or phrase outside of a story that the writer assumes the reader will recognize.  An allusive reference can be real or fictional.  For example, when Mercutio refers to Cupid in Romeo in Juliet, he is making a classical allusion.  A literary allusion refers to another written work, art piece, book, etc.

 Dialect is variation of a given language spoken in a particular place or by a particular group of people. A dialect is distinguished by its vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation.  If we’re only talking about pronunciation, we usually use the term “accent.”  Dialect is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors, such as social class.

 “Color” or local flavor in Huck Finn:  Customs: Jim’s (and Huck’s) superstitions.  Dress: How the duke and king are dressed in various parts of the story.  Speech: Huck’s and Jim’s dialects.