| This thesis analyzes Twain's Huckleberry Finn within the context of a critical framework that focuses on revealing the contested, contradictory, and culturally liberating quality of the novel. It is my contention that through its literary contexts of place, class, and race, Huckleberry Finn exemplifies the profound complexity and contradictory tendencies in the life and times of Mark Twain. My study of Twain's Autobiography , along with a number of relevant literary, critical, historical, and biographical sources, will endeavor to demonstrate the pervasiveness of the contested quality of Huckleberry Finn, a text believed by many authorities to be "the great American novel."... |
