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Depiction of Huckleberry Finn on 1917 sheet music cover
Courtesy of American Memory.
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Subject Areas |
History and Social Studies
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U.S. History - African-American |
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U.S. History - Civil Rights |
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U.S. History - Other |
Literature and Language Arts
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American |
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Fiction |
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Time Required |
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10-15 class periods (after students have complete reading the novel) |
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Skills |
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-writing literary criticism
-historical/biographical analysis
-making inferences
-providing evidence
-research, both on the internet and in historical texts
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Additional Data |
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Created 01/09/03 |
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Critical Ways of Seeing The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in Context
Introduction Huckleberry Finn
opens with a warning from its author that misinterpreting readers will be shot.
Despite the danger, readers have been approaching the novel from such diverse
critical perspectives for 120 years that it is both commonly taught and frequently
banned, for a variety of reasons. Studying both the novel and its critics with
an emphasis on cultural context will help students develop analytical tools essential
for navigating this work and other American controversies. This lesson asks students
to combine internet historical research with critical reading. Then students will
produce several writing assignments exploring what readers see in Huckleberry
Finn and why they see it that way. Guiding Question:1.
How does a critic's cultural context help explain his or her opinions about a
book? 2. What influences in my cultural context help explain my opinions about
a book? 3. How does acknowledging my opinions' origins in the culture around
me, and recognizing that changes in culture cause changes in opinions, affect
the way I state my opinion? Learning ObjectivesAfter
completing this unit, students will be able to: - Read and write literary
criticism
- Perform historical/biographical analysis of non-fiction works
- Define cultural context and describe aspects of others' contexts as well
as their own
- Make inferences and develop the ability to provide convincing
evidence to support their inferences
Preparing
to Teach this Lesson- "Cultural context" is
a term that is used often and defined rarely. Consider before starting the lesson
how you will define and use this term with your students. Particularly useful
in defining culture for this lesson is Eric Miraglia's What
Is Culture?, accessible through the EDSITEment-reviewed Internet Public Library
and its link to the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association site.
- Review key aspects of cultural contexts that have had an impact on critics
of Huckleberry Finn, particularly Victorian morality and more recent
debates about race and high school literary selections. In addition to print sources
on these topics, the following websites may be useful:
On Victorian
mores: While it is difficult to find sites that look at the Victorian
era in an unromanticized way, these sites provide some unique perspectives: - Duke
University's Ad*Access
site, a link from the EDSITEment-reviewed History
Matters site, provides an excellent look at popular culture through advertising.
- Gonzaga University's A
Brief Timeline of American Literature, Music and Movies, 1890-1929, a link
also from the History Matters site,
provides another look at late Victorian popular culture.
On African-American
status in the 19th century: - The most succinct site offering a
glimpse of 19th century African-American life is The
Time Line of African-American History, 1852-1925, which is part of the EDSITEment-reviewed
Library of Congress American Memory Collection.
- On the debates about
race and Huckleberry Finn in high schools: Huckleberry
Finn Debated, 1884-2001, edited by Jim Zwick and linked from the EDSITEment
reviewed Internet Public Library, is an excellent
compendium of information and links on these debates. This site will be integral
to students' work on this project.
- See also Lesson 1 of the ArtsEdge
curriculum unit on Mark
Twain, The Lincoln of Our Literature: Lesson 1, Icon and Iconoclast
- Review
the literary critical essays on Huckleberry Finn that students will use
in Activity 2 below. Determine whether you want to choose a small group of these
essays for your students' use or let students choose from the whole set. You may
want to download and print the essays if you choose to work with a subset of the
available essays. Two sites contain a wealth of these essays: the EDSITEment reviewed
Mark Twain in His Times, which
contains dozens of contemporary reviews of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn;
and Huckleberry
Finn Debated, 1884-2001, which contains reviews from Twain's contemporaries
through the present day.
- If appropriate or helpful, bookmark on computers
students may be using the sites for literary essays and historical timelines.
- a. The
Time Line of African-American History, 1852-1925, which is part of the EDSITEment-reviewed
Library of Congress American Memory Collection.
b. The National Women's
History Project's A Timeline
of the Women's Rights Movement 1848-1998 , a link on the EDSITEment reviewed
History Matters site.
c.
A Brief
Timeline of American Literature, Music and Movies, 1890-1929, a link also
on the History Matters site.
d.
The
1900s Timeline, from About.com and accessible through the EDSITEment- reviewed
Internet Public Library.
e. Harlem
1900-1940: Timeline, a timeline from the EDSITEment-reviewed Harlem
1900-1940: An African American Community.
f. Mark
Twain in His Times: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Contemporary Reviews,
on the EDSITEment reviewed Mark Twain
in His Times. g. Huckleberry
Finn Debated, 1884-2001, edited by Jim Zwick and linked from the EDSITEment
reviewed Internet Public Library.
- This
assignment asks students to refer to several Internet sources. You may want to
review your expectations for citing sources and providing proof before the unit
begins, or link to a page available through EDSITEment that gives guidelines for
electronic citations, http://www.columbia.edu/cu/cup/cgos/idx_basic.html.
It may also be helpful for students to see a rubric
for their assessment early in the assignment.
- Determine whether the
cultural context of your classroom, most notably the school system and parental
preferences, make it prudent for you to require parental permission before students
explore this morally and racially challenging text.
Suggested
Activities 1: Student
critique 2: Comparing and contrasting
two reviews of Huckleberry Finn 3:
The cultural context of each Huckleberry Finn reviewer 4:
How do social and historical context influence each reviewer? 5:
The student's cultural context 1:
Student critique After reading The
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, students write a short (200 to 400-word)
critique, either of the novel in general or of a specific aspect of the novel.
[See pdf file, Introduction
to Literary Criticism and Analysis for guidance on writing a critique] - Rationale:
This will sharpen students’ familiarity with the book and with their
own opinions of it. It will also help them to analyze other critics' work if they
have engaged in the same kind of endeavor, and it will provide a later body of
evidence in which they can detect their own biases and cultural influences.
- Planning/Rubric:
As you design your instructions for the critique assignment, consider whether
you wish students to use "I" in expressing their opinions, and consider the requirements
you will give them for providing evidence for their positions. The student-written
critique can be useful for this unit whether it is informal and emphasizes students'
feelings or more formal and requires substantial evidence from the novel to support
those feelings.
2:
Comparing and contrasting two reviews of Huckleberry Finn Students
then compare and contrast the ideas in two published critiques or reviews of the
novel, ideally from two different authors and time periods, with their own opinions
as expressed in their critiques. - Resources: Two comprehensive sources
for criticism of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn are the EDSITEment-reviewed
Mark Twain in His Times, The
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Contemporary Reviews, and Huckleberry
Finn Debated, 1884-2001, edited by Jim Zwick, a link from the EDSITEment reviewed
Internet Public Library.
- Rationale:
Considering their own ideas in the same way that they consider those of published
critics will help students understand that all writers about a book are readers,
and all individual readers notice and evaluate aspects of a text differently.
- Planning:
a.
Consider whether you want to limit the number of critical essays students can
choose from. You may also consider other ways of structuring students' choices:
for example, do you want them to pick two reviews that disagree on similar issues?
While the unit's goal of exposing students to a variety of cultural contexts is
reinforced when students choose critical essays from different eras, you may also
consider limiting students' choices to the same time period or issue.
b. Consider how you want students to report their findings. Is a simple "Similarities
and Differences" chart acceptable? Do you want them to write up their findings
in paragraph form? Because the unit requires students to write several texts,
a chart might be welcome at this stage. 3:
The cultural context of each Huckleberry Finn reviewer Students
will then explore the cultural context of each critic whose work they are analyzing.
They will look at contemporary historical events and social practices during the
critic's life, governing such realms as race, gender, age and class-based roles
in society. - Resources: The following EDSITEment-reviewed websites
provide diverse information that will help students gain a sense of historical
influences and social practices that may influence critics:
a.
The Time Line of African-American
History, 1852-1925, from the EDSITEment-reviewed American Memory Collection.
b. The National Women's History Project's A
Timeline of the Women's Rights Movement 1848-1998, a link on the EDSITEment
reviewed History Matters site.
c. Gonzaga University's A
Brief Timeline of American Literature, Music and Movies, 1890-1929 , a link
from History Matters.
d.
The
1900s Timeline, accessible through the EDSITEment-reviewed Internet
Public Library.
e. Harlem
1900-1940: Timeline, a timeline from the EDSITEment-reviewed Harlem
1900-1940: An African American Community.
f. Duke University's Ad*Access
site, a terrific look at popular culture through advertising, a link through History
Matters.
a.
Consider how your school's history or social studies department could provide
other resources for students; this may be a good opportunity for interdisciplinary
cooperation.
b. As students find historical and social markers that may
influence critics, it will be beneficial for them to note what did not happen
or had not yet happened. This may influence their inferences in the next step.
For example, how could the fact that the Civil Rights Movement did not happen
until after Booker T. Washington's death explain some aspects of how Washington
views Huckleberry Finn?
- Rationale:
This background search will help students grasp what cultural context is and will
give them a scholarly foundation for the inferences they will make in the next
activity.
- Planning: This is the most time-consuming aspect of
the unit. You may consider having students work in pairs or groups. Depending
on students' access to computers and other research materials outside of class
or school, you may need to schedule ample class time with access to computers
for students to complete this task. Students may also need quick training in determining
which information is relevant to their project.
4:
How does social and historical context influence each reviewer? Students
will reread the two published critical essays they compared earlier, and they
will make inferences that answer the central question of the unit: How do the
historical and social realities students found in their cultural context research
seem to influence critics' views of Huckleberry Finn? - Rationale:
This will form the core of the students' cultural criticism; through the inferences
they make here and the evidence they provide for those inferences, students will
identify the relationship between a wider culture and an individual's ideas.
- Planning:
Depending on how adept students are at making inferences, some training in that
process may be necessary. Consider ways to help students brainstorm lots of possible
cause-effect relationships, and then focus their assertions on ones they can provide
logic or evidence for. A mini-lesson that may be helpful might include showing
students pictures from magazines or family photo albums, and then asking them
to guess when the pictures were taken and what evidence they have for their guesses.
5: The student's cultural context Finally,
students will try to identify key elements of their own cultural contexts, compare
their cultural contexts with those of the critics, and demonstrate how these influences
appear in their own critiques of the novel. - Rationale: This will
reinforce the inference-making and evidence-providing activities involved in cultural
criticism of the most difficult subject to analyze: ourselves.
AssessmentYou might consider before the unit
begins how you want students to provide assessable evidence that they have successfully
completed steps four and five. If the unit culminates in an essay, consider developing
and distributing a rubric for it as students are finishing their cultural context
research or refer to the one provided here.
You may also consider whether you want students to perform separate assessments
of their inferences about published critics' cultural contexts and their own,
or whether these two sets of inferences should be combined in one assessment.
Extending the LessonStudents
may go on to use these skills to re-examine Mark Twain as a writer who is also
a reader of history and culture—someone who, just as students have just done,
examines how historical and social realities affect individuals. They can do this
by examining materials that show the difference between the America of Twain's
childhood, which heavily influenced the characters and plot of the novel, and
the America of the 1880s, which heavily influenced in complex ways Twain's attitude
toward the world of his childhood and the tone of his book. A good starting place
for analyzing the changes in Twain's understanding of the world, particularly
the roles of African-Americans in it, is Shelly Fisher Fishkin's essay
"Teaching Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn", part
of the PBS website on Huckleberry Finn and linked to the Internet
Public Library. While the essay is directed to teachers, it is accessible
to sophisticated students who have juggled well this unit's overlapping lenses
of their own views, critics' views, and the views seen through Huck's narrating
perspective. Fishkin refers readers to some of Twain's later writings, which clarify
the differences between the older Samuel Clemens' views and the young, fictional
Huck Finn's views on race. This sophisticated exploration might help students
navigate historical fiction by detecting the ideas of one era as they show up
in a story about an earlier time period. Selected
EDSITEment Websites
Other Information
Standards Alignment
- NCSS-1
Culture and cultural diversity. more
- NCSS-2
Time, continuity, and change. The ways human beings view themselves in and over time. more
- NCSS-5
Individuals, groups, and institutions. more
- NCTE/IRA-1
Students read a wide range of print and nonprint texts to build an understanding of texts, of themselves, and of the cultures of the United States and the world; to acquire new information; to respond to the needs and demands of society and the workplace; and for personal fulfillment. Among these texts are fiction and nonfiction, classic and contemporary works. more
- NCTE/IRA-2
Students read a wide range of literature from many periods in many genres to build an understanding of the many dimensions (e.g., philosophical, ethical, aesthetic) of human experience. more
- NCTE/IRA-3
Students adjust their use of spoken, written, and visual language (e.g., conventions, style, vocabulary) to communicate effectively with a variety of audiences and for different purposes. more
- NCTE/IRA-4
Students adjust their use of spoken, written, and visual language (e.g., conventions, style, vocabulary) to communicate effectively with a variety of audiences and for different purposes. more
- NCTE/IRA-5
Students employ a wide range of strategies as they write and use different writing process elements appropriately to communicate with different audiences for a variety of purposes. more
- NCTE/IRA-6
Students apply knowledge of language structure, language conventions (e.g., spelling and punctuation), media techniques, figurative language, and genre to create, critique, and discuss print and nonprint texts. more
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