Was Huck Black?: Mark Twain and African-American Voices (Oxford Paperbacks)

Published in 1884, Huck Finn has become one of the most widely taught novels in American curricula. But where did Huckleberry Finn come from, and what made it so distinctive? Shelley Fisher Fishkin suggests that in Huckleberry Finn , more than in any other work, Mark Twain let African-American voices, language, and rhetorical traditions play a major role in the creation of his art.In Was Huck Black? , Fishkin combines close readings of published and unpublished writing by Twain with intensive biographical and historical research and insights gleaned from linguistics, literary theory, and folklore to shed new light on the role African-American speech played in the genesis of Huckleberry Finn . Given that book's importance in American culture, her analysis illuminates, as well, how the voices of African-Americans have shaped our sense of what is distinctively View Less