Huckleberry Finn: Aktuelle Zensur eines Klassikers?

2019 ◽  
Vol 60 (1) ◽  
pp. 299-315
Author(s):  
Angelika Zirker
Keyword(s):  
World Literature ◽  
American Library Association ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
The Novel ◽  
American Library ◽  
Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn ◽  
The Us ◽  
History Of ◽  
Huckleberry Finn

Mark Twain’s novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, first published in England in 1884 and a year later in the US, is paradoxical in that it is one of most frequently censored books of world literature – and, concurrently, one of the most frequently read and praised. The following article will try to explain this paradox and, in a first step, address the history of the novel’s censorship and the (various) reasons given for it. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has undergone censorship since its first publication, and even today it is included in the list of »Banned and Challenged Books« of ALA (American Library Association). What are, in fact, reasons for banning the book? And how are these reasons questioned by defenders of the book? Which strategies are used? Since the novel’s publication, those who have completely dismissed the book and those who have appreciated it as a »masterpiece« have opposed each other. An overview of these controversies will result in a close reading of one of the most debated chapters in the novel, with a focus on the autodiegetic narrator Huck, who has been characterized as a naïve child that simply does not know any better, as a »fallible narrator«, or as a liar. But it remains doubtful whether the narrator’s weakness is the answer to the question of Huck’s alleged racism. The paper will offer alternative roads into the novel that consider both the text and the context of its origin.

scholarly journals Exposure and Black Migrancy in Teju Cole

2019 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 60-79
Author(s):  
Nicholas Gamso
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
World Literature ◽  
Literary Culture ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Critical Studies ◽  
The Us ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Control

AbstractThrough a reading of Teju Cole’s novel Open City (2011), this article argues that the exposure of black migrants constitutes the principal organizing conceit of global literary culture and knowledge production. The novel’s protagonist, a Nigerian emigre named Julius, is faced with ceaseless scrutiny as he traverses urban spaces in the US, Europe, and West Africa, meeting other migrants. In staging Julius’ encounters with others, the novel allegorizes a structure of racialized subjection continuous with the modern history of western epistemology and glaringly present in the contemporary. Yet it also provides grounds for a recursive ethic of opacity, which Julius eagerly endorses. The article surveys critical studies of race, migration, infrastructure, and world literature, in addition to Cole’s writings on photography. The aim is not only to uncover the logics of racialization at play in the enactment of culture, but also to conceive of culture itself as a historical infrastructure of privation and control.

scholarly journals Positioning the Chinese Princess of Peace in World Literature

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 18
Author(s):  
Novita Dewi
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Research Methods ◽  
World Literature ◽  
Pop Culture ◽  
Qualitative Research Methods ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Literary Works ◽  
Colonial Time ◽  
History Of

<p>The novel <em>Putri Cina</em> or <em>The Chinese Princess</em> by Sindhunata builds on the intertextuality of various texts such as myths, chronicles, history, and pop culture. In the light of René Girard’s theory of desire, revenge, and scapegoating, this study aims (1) to show the inter-relationship among the texts in question; and (2) placing this novel in the work of World Literature. Through qualitative research methods and close reading techniques, this study finds out that <em>Putri Cina</em> recounts the history of conflicts to promote peace rather than revenge. The novel narrates such conflicts as the war between the descendants of the Javanese kings; the feud between the Chinese and Javanese people in colonial time; and the May 1998 ethnic riots in Indonesia. It concludes that it is necessary to circulate the narrative of the Chinese Princess as a peace ambassador in World Literature through the process of adaptation and translation. In a world prone to conflict, literary works can be effective agents of transformation.</p>

scholarly journals The Challenges of Translating The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn into Romanian

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 128-145
Author(s):  
Alexandra Mitrea
Keyword(s):  
American Literature ◽  
World Literature ◽  
Original Novel ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Ordinary People ◽  
Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn ◽  
Novel Approach ◽  
Huge Impact ◽  
Target Readership ◽  
Huckleberry Finn

Abstract A classic of American literature, Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has had a huge impact not only on American literature but also on world literature. Its bold and freshly creative style, its humor and the author’s endless verve and vitality, the multifaceted and novel approach to life have all contributed to its success and popularity. However, Twain’s greatest merit probably lies in the way in which he used language, crafting art out of the speech of ordinary people. His experiments with language, the vernacular in particular, have meant a huge step forward in American literature and have been a source of inspiration for many writers. However, the translation of the novel has generated huge challenges related to the linguistic register appropriate for the translation of the novel and the strategies for rendering dialect, the African-American one in particular. It has also divided Romanian translators with regard to the target readership the original novel addressed: children, adults or both.

Stranger Fictions

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca C. Johnson
Keyword(s):  
World Literature ◽  
Arab World ◽  
Central Place ◽  
Arabic Literature ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Reading Practices ◽  
Global Circulation ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
History Of ◽  
Modern Arabic

Zaynab, first published in 1913, is widely cited as the first Arabic novel, yet the previous eight decades saw hundreds of novels translated into Arabic from English and French. This vast literary corpus influenced generations of Arab writers but has, until now, been considered a curious footnote in the genre's history. Incorporating these works into the history of the Arabic novel, this book offers a transformative new account of modern Arabic literature, world literature, and the novel. This book rewrites the history of the global circulation of the novel by moving Arabic literature from the margins of comparative literature to its center. Considering the wide range of nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century translation practices, the book argues that Arabic translators did far more than copy European works; they authored new versions of them, producing sophisticated theorizations of the genre. These translations and the reading practices they precipitated form the conceptual and practical foundations of Arab literary modernity, necessitating an overhaul of our notions of translation, cultural exchange, and the global. The book shows how translators theorized the Arab world not as Europe's periphery but as an alternative center in a globalized network. It affirms the central place of (mis)translation in both the history of the novel in Arabic and the novel as a transnational form itself.

scholarly journals Translating national history for children: a case study of a classic

2018 ◽  
Vol 71 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-116
Author(s):  
B.J. Epstein
Keyword(s):  
Race Relations ◽  
Adult Readers ◽  
National History ◽  
Language And Culture ◽  
Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn ◽  
Black Characters ◽  
History Of ◽  
Child Readers ◽  
Huckleberry Finn

Mark Twain’s classic novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is arguably about the history of theUnited States in terms of slavery and race relations. How, then, can this be translated to another language and culture, especially one with a very different background in regard to minorities? And in particular, how can this be translated for children, who have less knowledge about history and slavery than adult readers? In this essay, I analyse how Twain’s novel has been translated to Swedish. I study 15 translations. Surprisingly, I find that instead of retaining Twain’s even-handed portrayal of the two races and his acceptance of a wide variety of types of Americans, Swedish translators tend to emphasise the foreignness, otherness, and lack of education of the black characters. In other words, although the American setting is kept, the translators nevertheless give Swedish readers a very different understanding of theUnited Statesand slavery than that which Twain strove to give his American readers. This may reflect the differences in immigration and cultural makeup inSwedenversus inAmerica, but it radically changes the book as well as child readers’ understanding of what makes a nation.

scholarly journals Emotions vocabulary and the reconceptualisation of emotions in Ann Radcliffe’s “The Italian, or the Confessional of the Black Penitents”

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-58
Author(s):  
Elena D. Andonova-Kalapsazova
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
David Hume ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
Emotional Experience ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Emotional Experiences ◽  
Critical Studies ◽  
Francis Hutcheson ◽  
History Of

The article undertakes the analysis of Ann Radcliffe’s novel The Italian, or the Confessional of the Black Penitents (1797) from a history of literary emotions perspective which, I argue, yields insights into the attitudes towards emotions embedded in Radcliffe’s works. A reading of the novel from such a perspective also complements the critical studies of the artist’s engaging with the eighteenth-century cult of sensibility. The novel is read as a text that registered but also participated in the dissemination of an epistemology of emotional experience articulated in the idiom of eighteenth-century moral philosophers – Francis Hutcheson, David Hume and Adam Smith - at the same time as it retained some of the older, theology-based conceptions of passions and affections. The dynamic in which the two frameworks for understanding the emotions exist in the novel is explored through a close reading of the vocabulary in which Radcliffe rendered the emotional experiences of her fictional characters. In this reading it is the passions which are found to have been invested with a variety of meanings and attributed a range of moral valences that most noticeably foreground the movement from a generally negative towards a more complex appreciation of powerful emotions.

scholarly journals Huckleberry Finn’s Conscience: Reckoning with the Evasion

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 485-508
Author(s):  
Steve Clarke
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Race Relations ◽  
Final Part ◽  
Moral Deliberation ◽  
Literary Scholarship ◽  
Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn ◽  
The Us ◽  
Us Civil War ◽  
Moral Guidance ◽  
Huckleberry Finn

Abstract Huck Finn’s struggles with his conscience, as depicted in Mark Twain’s famous novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (AHF) (1884), have been much discussed by philosophers; and various philosophical lessons have been extracted from Twain’s depiction of those struggles. Two of these philosophers stand out, in terms of influence: Jonathan Bennett and Nomy Arpaly. Here I argue that the lessons that Bennett and Arpaly draw are not supported by a careful reading of AHF. This becomes particularly apparent when we consider the final part of the book, commonly referred to, by literary scholars, as ‘the evasion’. During the evasion Huck behaves in ways that are extremely difficult to reconcile with the interpretations of AHF offered by Bennett and Arpaly. I extract a different philosophical lesson from AHF than either Bennett or Arpaly, which makes sense of the presence of the evasion in AHF. This lesson concerns the importance of conscious moral deliberation for moral guidance and for overcoming wrongful moral assumptions. I rely on an interpretation of AHF that is influential in literary scholarship. On it the evasion is understood as an allegory about US race relations during the 20-year period from the end of the US Civil War to the publication of AHF.

Revisiting the Circus with Huckleberry Finn: Huck's Pleasure and Mine

PMLA ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 133 (3) ◽  
pp. 647-653
Author(s):  
Barbara Hochman
Keyword(s):  
The Novel ◽  
Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn ◽  
Hands On ◽  
Huckleberry Finn

With the exception of occasional quiet moments on the raft, the circus scene in the adventures of huckleberry finn is arguably the only episode of the novel where Huck is absorbed by an experience that gives him pleasure: I went to the circus. … It was a real bully circus. It was the splendidest sight that ever was, when they all come riding in two and two, a gentleman and lady, side by side, the men just in their drawers and undershirts and no shoes nor stirrups, and resting their hands on their thighs, easy and comfortable—there must a' been twenty of them— and every lady with a lovely complexion, and perfectly beautiful, and looking just like a gang of real sure-enough queens. … It was a powerful fine sight. I never see anything so lovely. … (Twain 134–35)

scholarly journals The Poetics of Adaptation in Frankenstein in Baghdad

2021 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 1749-1755
Author(s):  
Asst. Prof. Raad Kareem Abd-Aun Asst. Lec. Ameer Abd Hadi
Keyword(s):  
The Novel ◽  
Modern History ◽  
Innocent People ◽  
Suicide Bombers ◽  
The People ◽  
The Us ◽  
Critical Phase ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Terrorist Acts

During the peak of the sectarian war in Iraq after the US invasion in 2003, there seemed to be an absolute absence of the mind and a great deal of hatred and tension among the people of Baghdad that turned into maddening acts of terrorism, like car bombings and suicide bombers, killing thousands of innocent people. Frankenstein in Baghdad came to be the mouthpiece of that very critical phase in the modern history of Iraq. The abundant acts of killing and bloodshed during 2005 turned into an ugly form of a monster called " Whatsitsname" formed from the fragmented parts of those killed by terrorist acts. The creature bears a clear resemblance to Marry Shelley's monster in her novel Frankenstein. The monster is a loose perpetrator that kills whoever it meets. This study attempts to analyze the writer's poetics of adaptation in the novel and his debt to other literary works.

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