Introduction

Twain: Huckleberry Finn

In this course, Professor Larry Howe (Roosevelt University) explores Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. After a short introductory lecture, we spend four lectures talking about the language of the novel. In the first of these, we think about the development of a distinctively American language, culture and literature (distinct from Great Britain). After that, in the third and fourth lectures, we think about the language used by Huck and Jim in the novel, before turning in the fifth lecture to consider Huck’s use of the n-word in the novel. In the sixth lecture, we think about the representation of money, property and ownership in the novel, before turning in the seventh and final lecture to think about Twain’s personal transformation from a man who had ‘no aversion to slavery’ as a schoolboy to someone who would go on to write passionately and sensitively about the treatment of enslaved peoples and other oppressed populations around the world.

Introduction

In this short lecture we provide a brief introduction to Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn before outlining what is it store for the rest of the course: four lectures about the language of Huckleberry Finn, a fifth about the representation of money and property in the novel, and a sixth about Twain’s transformation from someone who had ‘no aversion to slavery’ to someone who write passionately and sensitively about the treatment of enslaved peoples and other oppressed populations around the world.