The N-Word and Beyond. Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Political Correctness

Abstract

The essay surveys the history of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn’s fraught relationship with the American literary establishment and reading public from the late nineteenth to the twenty-first century. It investigates how the dynamics of  “political correctness” interact with issues such as race and class in the United States, and how literature can mirror the changes and contradictions in American society.