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Article: De same ole Huck--America's speculum meditantis. A (p)re-view.(LITERATURE)(Critical essay)
- Article from:
- Studia Anglica Posnaniensia: international review of English Studies
- Article date:
- January 1, 2006
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2006 Adam Mickiewicz University. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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ABSTRACT
By common agreement, Huckleberry Finn is not only the most American boy in literature, but is also the character with whom American readers of all ages tend to identify most readily and most intimately. Against ready-made assumptions, the paper investigates the protagonist's unique constitution, modus operandi, and existential appeal. As a passe-partout to the text, it is suggested that Huck is at one and the same time, and as a primary rather than a secondary phenomenon, a small boy as well as a full-grown man. An apparent repository of classically definable unnecessary desires, informed by a combined Carlylean-Melvillean-Whitmanesque discourse of the ...