American Literature

Week 11: Regional and Humorous Literature

Please READ:

• Sidney Lanier 275-277
• Billings, Crockett, Fink. 278-282
• Shenandoah 340-1
• El Corrido 341-2
• Please also continue with Huckleberry Finn. You should be at least two-thirds of the way through it by now.

CONSIDER for discussion:

• Regional literature is, in the first place, an apparent outgrowth of the realism movement in American literature. Does it seem to discharge this well?
• Huckleberry Finn is considered by some critics to be the greatest American novel. Twain's scrupulous depiction of regional color, his concern for social justice, and his use of a symbolic vocabulary that never intrudes but lends a structure to the whole, produces a work that is deceptively simple in its outlines, but which repays close attention. How would you compare this with the other novels you have read so far this year? If you have read Tom Sawyer, how would you compare it with that?