MARC Record from marc_columbia

LEADER: 04404fam a2200493 a 4500
001 1260485
005 20220602004103.0
008 920911s1993 nyua b 001 0deng
010 $a 92031228
020 $a0195082141 (alk. paper)
035 $a(OCoLC)26724043
035 $a(OCoLC)ocm26724043
035 $9AGZ5614CU
035 $a(NNC)1260485
035 $a1260485
040 $aDLC$cDLC$dDLC$dNNC
043 $an-us---
050 00 $aPS1305$b.F57 1993
082 00 $a813/.4$220
100 1 $aFishkin, Shelley Fisher.$0http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n84145055
245 10 $aWas Huck Black? :$bMark Twain and African-American voices /$cShelley Fisher Fishkin.
260 $aNew York :$bOxford University Press,$c1993.
300 $axiv, 270 pages :$billustrations ;$c24 cm
336 $atext$2rdacontent
337 $aunmediated$2rdamedia
338 $avolume$2rdacarrier
504 $aIncludes bibliographical references (p. 219-247) and index.
520 $aPublished in 1884, Huckberry Finn has become one of the most widely taught novels in American curricula. But where did it come from, and what made it so distinctive? Shelly 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.
520 8 $aIn Was Huck Black?, Fishkin combines close readings of published and unpublished writing by Twain with intensive biographical and historical research and insights gleaned from linguistics, literary theory, and folklore to shed new light on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 voices played in the genesis of Huckleberry Finn.
520 8 $aGiven that book's importance in American culture, her analysis illuminates, as well, how African-American voices have shaped our sense of what is distinctively "American" about American literature.
520 8 $aFishkin shows that Mark Twain was surrounded, throughout his life, by richly talented African-American speakers whose rhetorical gifts Twain admired candidly and profusely. A black child named Jimmy whom Twain called "the most art-less, sociable, and exhaustless talker I ever came across" helped Twain understand the potential of a vernacular narrator in the years before he began writing Huckberry Finn, and served as a model for the voice with which Twain would transform American literature.
520 8 $aA slave named Jerry whom Twain referred to as an "impudent and satirical and delightful young black man" taught Twain about "signifying" - satire in an African-American vein - when Twain was a teenager (later Twain would recall that he thought him "the greatest man in the United States" at the time). Other African-American voices left their mark on Twain's imagination as well - but their role in the creation of his art has never been recognized.
520 8 $aWas Huck Black? adds a new dimension to current debates over multiculturalism and the canon.
520 8 $aAmerican literary historians have told a largely segregated story: white writers come from white literary ancestors, black writers from black ones. The truth is more complicated and more interesting. While African-American culture shaped Huckleberry Finn, that novel, in turn, helped shape African-American writing in the twentieth century. As Ralph Ellison commented in an interview with Fishkin, Twain "made it possible for many of us to find our own voices.".
520 8 $aWas Huck Black? dramatizes the crucial role of black voices in Twain's art, and takes the first steps beyond traditional cultural boundaries to unveil an American literary heritage that is infinitely richer and more complex than we had thought.
600 10 $aTwain, Mark,$d1835-1910.$tAdventures of Huckleberry Finn.$0http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n79132705
600 10 $aTwain, Mark,$d1835-1910$xCharacters$xAfrican Americans.
600 10 $aTwain, Mark,$d1835-1910$xFriends and associates.
650 0 $aAuthors, American$y19th century$vBiography.$0http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh2007100461
650 0 $aAfrican Americans in literature.$0http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85002009
650 0 $aAfrican Americans$vBiography.$0http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh2007100197
852 00 $boff,glx$hPS1305$i.F57 1993
852 00 $bbar$hPS1305$i.F57 1993
852 00 $bmil$hPS1305$i.F57 1993