The Historical and Cultural Context of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

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The Historical and Cultural Context of
Adventures of Huckleberry Finnby Mark Twain
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Historical Context of Huckleberry Finn

• Set in pre-Civil War years
• 40-50 years before 1885 publication
• Slavery ended, but racism still rampant (Jim Crow
  Laws)

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• Mark Twain underwent moral transformation
• He believed slavery was wrong and white
  Americans owed black Americans reparations

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• 19th CENTURY
• The Civil War
• Industrial Revolution
• Extreme contrasts between rich and poor

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Literary and Artistic Movements REALISM and
REGIONALISM

• 1. Attack upon Romantics and Transcendentalists
• pragmatic, democratic, and experimental
• Responsibly moral goal was to report the world
  with HONESTY

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• Drew subject matter from our experience
• Focused on the common, the average, the probable

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• 3. Character and Setting more important than Plot
  
• (Local Color Movement)
• Focused on the norm of daily experience
• Dialect, geography, regional manners

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HUCKLEBERRY FINN is a

• COMING-OF-AGE NOVEL moral growth of a comic
  character in an physically beautiful yet morally
  repugnant setting

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• and a
• PICARESQUE NOVEL follows the adventures of a
  roguish hero
• episodic Mississippi River
• flight to freedom vs. river flowing toward Deep
  South (slave territory)

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• 19th century Americans are self-conscious
• They want to know what their new country looks
  like, and how the varied races of growing
  population live and talk

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19th century Firsts

• First mappings of the West
• First transcontinental railroad
• First Photography

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Photography as a social mirror

• The invention ignited an artistic and scientific
  frenzy
• Best portrait makers could bring out the very
  human essence of a subject
• The advantages of photography immediacy,
  reliable representation, low cost, etc

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• Massive social changes reflected in literature
  photography.
• 1861-65 - Mathew Brady, Alexander Gardner honest
  photographic record of the Civil War.
• Photography, like literary Realism Regionalism
• showed TRUTH.

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• Something new happened in Huck Finn that had
  never happened in American literature before. It
  was a bookthat served as a Declaration of
  Independence from the genteel English novel

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• It allowed a different kind of writing to
  happen a clean, crisp, no-nonsense, earthly
  vernacularit was a book that talked. Hucks
  voice, combined with Twains satiric genius,
  changed the shape of fiction in America, and
  African-American voices had a great deal to do
  with making it what it was. - Dr.
  Shelley Fishkin, 1995

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Photograph
Comparing VIEWPOINTS OF SLAVERY in
Huckleberry Finn

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"Slave Boy Brought to Waterbury from Bucks Hill
by Aunt Ella Johnson's Second Husband
(Whelan)"Ninth-plate ambrotype, circa
1855http//www.photographymuseum.com/slaveboylg.
htmlThe American Photography Museum, Inc.
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"Our Little Pedlars"Quarter-plate ambrotype,
circa 1855-1860http//www.photographymuseum.com/
pedlarslg.htmlThe American Photography Museum,
Inc.
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W. Queen (Philadelphia), Publisher or
Retailer "The Darkey's Vanity" Tinted Albumen
Stereograph circa 1860 http//www.photographymuse
um.com/vanitylg.html The American Photography
Museum, Inc.
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Cumberland Landing, Virginia,Group of
"contrabands" at Foller's house, May 14,
1862 http//memory.loc.gov/learn/lessons/psources/
slavpho2.html The American Photography Museum,
Inc.
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Unidentified Photographer Civil War Soldiers
with a "Contraband" Albumen carte de visite,
circa 1863 http//www.photographymuseum.com /cont
rabl.html The American Photography Museum, Inc.
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Unidentified Photographer Ten
Children Cyanotype, circa 1898 http//www.photogra
phymuseum.com/cyanokidslg.html The American
Photography Museum, Inc.
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• Palmer (Tuskegee, Alabama)
• Instructor Three Graduates with Diplomas and
  Geraniums
• Gelatine-Silver Print, circa 1905
•  http//www.photographymuseum.com/tuskeglg.html
• The American Photography Museum, Inc.

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Works Cited

• The American Photography Museum, Inc.   Virtual
  Exhibit The Face of Slavery and Other Early
  Images of African Americans. (2004).
  http//www.photography-museum.com/faceof.html
• Cross, J.M. . Nineteenth-Century Photography A
  Timeline. The Victorian Web. (2001).
  http//www.victorianweb.org/photos/chron.html
• Reuben, Paul P. Chapter 5 Late Nineteenth
  Century American Realism - A Brief
  Introduction. PAL Perspectives in American
  Literature A Research and Reference Guide - An
  Ongoing Project.(2003). http//www.csustan.edu/en
  glish/reuben/pal/chap5/5intro.html
• Rubio, Juan Carlos. (Curator). Portraits and
  Landscapes in Nineteenth Century Photography.
  Private Collections of Madrid. Fundacion
  Telefonico. (2001). http//www.fundacion.telefoni
  ca.com/at/photoes/efotoxix.html