Can We Learn to Argue

8/6/2019 Can We Learn to Argue

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Riddles (like most jokes) are signs that the speaker is able tomanipulate the contexts in which specific words refer. Telling thisriddle, which silently shifts the reference of the adverb "where"froma place to a condition, displays to Buck his command of linguisticconventions. The act reminds him that he is culturally literate.No doubt Huck's ignorance is necessary to this effect, as theaudience's response to a riddle always is. Were I to figure out one ofmy eight-year old son's riddles, he would feel diminished. Theaudience's pleasure at the punchline is really its admiration for theteller's cultural literacy; understanding how riddles work, the audi-ence appreciates the competence required to tell one. Therefore theaudience's pleasure at the riddle confirms not just the teller's literacybut also its own. The audience shares the joke, even though (orperhaps because) it did not guess the specific punchline, for the jokereally concerns the ability of members of a community to negotiateand adapt its conventions.

Huck, of course, is a frustrating audience. He is irritated by Buck'sriddle because he cannot conceive of a question not meant to elicitinformation; to him, a speech act taking the form of a question canfunction only as a question. Buck is, in turn, initially irritated byHuck's response, but he straightway sees in Huck's bafflement anopportunity to instruct Huck in how to be a boy. Buck teaches bydisplaying his own competence in adolescence. He insists that Huckstay forever and join him in not attending school, in appreciating howwell he has trained his dog to fetch, in not "combing up" (109) onSundays, and in finding ways to avoid wearing britches. Huck'sapparent ignorance makes him, finally, an ideal audience for Buck'sself-performance.The relations between Buck and Huck in this episode are invidi-ous and didactic. They are indeed disciplinary, as we now use theword following Michel Foucault, meaning "procedures of individual-ization,"the "modes by which ... human beings are made subjects."2The scene of instruction following Buck's riddle helps produce thesubjectivity of both boys. Huck, the novitiate, receives a lesson in therange of expectations he should bring to future linguistic exchangesand thus in his basic experience of himself. Correspondingly, Buckreceives and confirms his sense of himself by envisioning furtherinstruction of Huck. The episode presents the production of subjec-tivity as specifically literary. Huck must be instructed-and Buckmust anticipate himself instructing Huck-in how to apprehendriddles, which is to say, in how to exploit linguistic contexts. The other268 Can We Learn to Argue?


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activities in which Buck foresees instructing Huck are likewiseinterpretive, concerning when formal attire can be eschewed andhow animals respond to sounds and gestures.This exchange is utterly typical of Huckleberry Finn. The instruc-tion Huck continually receives in how to conduct himself tends to beinstruction in what we should call literary discipline. To be "sivilized,"Huck must learn to await prayer before a meal and to recognize thatthe prayers are not just "grumbling"about the quality of the food, ashe initially thinks; and he must learn that meals consist of separateportions, without all the ingredients cooked together (2). Whether ornot Huck endorses such distinctions, he must recognize them. Theseare symbolic instances of literacy, but the novel is full of moreobvious ones. Huck must learn when and how to pray (Huck thinksone prays for useful items like fishing equipment [12]), when $1 canstand for $6,000 (the fiction by which Judge Thatcher protects Huck'sreward money from Pap [19]), how to regard literary figures like theCount of Monte Cristo, how to interpret ghost stories, dreams, and"signs" (like the presence of snakeskins), and how to interpret andindeed use texts like adventure books, histories, Shakespeareandrama, sentimental poetry, and the Bible. Characters in this novel(like the rest of us) understand themselves largely through the waythey apprehend such narratives and, more generally, experiencesigns.As we see in the episode concerning Buck's riddle, this aestheticconstitution of the self, let us call it, structures and evolves throughsocial interactions. Mark Twain parodies this condition of identity inTom Sawyer's recycling of adventure stories, his adherence to his"authorities,"especially in the closing chapters when, in the name ofadventure and style, Tom subjects Jim to unconscionable cruelty.Nevertheless, Mark Twain offers no obvious alternative to literarydiscipline. When Huck debates with himself in chapter 31 whether torescue Jim or to inform Miss Watson of Jim'swhereabouts, he does sowholly within the frame of the two most prominent social narrativesin the novel, the Bible and slavery.3Huck's exclamation about goingto hell when he tears up his letter to Miss Watson, followed by hisdetermination instead to "steal Jim out of slavery again" (235),indicates how deeply he has internalized his community's interpreta-tion of scripture and of civil and property rights. Such ideas, andnumerous others, so frame Huck's experience of himself that hereaffirms their premises even as he disobeys them. Even the actionthat initiates the novel's narrative of liberation-setting Huck on theHoward Horwitz 269


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river to escape, it is often said, the confines of convention while Jimescapes slavery-exemplifies literary discipline. When Huck fleesPap's brutal regime by lying down in a canoe and setting it afloatdownriver, he is reenacting Moses's salvation, despite having earlierannounced skepticism of the story of Moses and the Bulrushersbecause he "don't take no stock in dead people" (2). Huck has sodeeply internalized this parable that he restages it unconsciously.This novel's tendency to evince the interpretive character ofsubjectivization anticipates the controversy that has consistentlysurrounded it.4 Contemporary scholars still follow Lionel Trilling inasking whether this novel reinforces or frees readers from the hold ofconvention, from values they have internalized. Huckleberry Finn, Ihave thus far been suggesting, asks a more general form of thisquestion: what is the nature and effect of literary discipline? Myphrasing may sound too presciently poststructuralist, but it wasprecisely the one Mark Twain's contemporaries raised about thefunction of literature and, even more crucially, literary study. Literarystudies emerged as a formal discipline, recognizably professional,toward the end of the nineteenth century. Advocates of so-calledmodern, scientific literary study, who established the Modern Lan-guage Association in 1883, proclaimed that their main objective wasto produce a particular kind of reader; they would cultivate instudents what they called mental discipline or literary discipline.5Readers possessed of mental discipline would be better citizensbecause freed from the dominion of habit and culture. If contempo-rary debates about Huckleberry Finn reformulate this ideal in adifferent idiom, the novel itself repudiates it as ludicrously impos-sible, albeit indispensable. Discipline enslaves, Twain believed, (andhis modern readers agree,) but the only condition that might qualifyas freedom is a laughable fantasy.

II. INDIRECTION AND IRONYEven in so small a moment as when the Grangerfords inspectHuck to determine that there "'ain't any Shepardson about him"'(107), Huckleberry Finn routinely presents characters with theproblem of how to interpret texts. In this case, the text is Huck's

physiognomy and clothing. The Grangerfords interpret Huck's ap-pearance as Huck interprets Buck'sriddle-formalistically, supposingthe meaning of a text to be transparent in its form. If a speech actresembles a question, it is a question; if a boy doesn't look like aShepardson, he is not an enemy. When Huck early on has trouble270 Can We Learnto Argue?


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understandingTom'sadventuregames,or when he later hasdifficultygraspingthe difference between stealing and borrowingfruit orunderstandingwhen it is alright o use a pickaxe("letting n" that it'sa caseknife)to digJim from the cabinimprisoninghim on the Phelpsfarm,he too is interpreting ormalistically.Whycan't he boys justusepickaxesand free Jimquickly?We applaudHuck'scommon sense in these instances,but he isemployingthe same model of interpretationas the Concord PublicLibraryCommittee that in 1885 deemed the novel "coarse andinelegant"f not "immoral."ustas HuckcannotcomprehendBuck'sriddle as anythingother thana question,forthe committeeimproperbehavior (smoking, swearing,and lying) can be only improper;ifHuck does coarse things, he is coarse, and readers will quiteunawaresabsorband imitatethe novel'scoarseness,asHuckdoes thestory of Moses. The book is therefore "not elevating."6 While weshouldof courseremember,as JonathanAracurges,that the epithet"nigger" as long been and remains a degrading,"wounding"word,we mustalsorecognizethatobjectionsto the novel's requentuse ofthis epithet, and also to its depictionof Jim as acceptingthe whiteboys' authority o torturehim on the Phelps farm,employthe samepremiseas the Concordcommittee'smorereadilydismissed,genteelobjectionto Huck'sincorrigibility.7 or those raisingthis objection,the prevalence of the racial epithet, especially without expresscriticism of its usage, is primafacie unacceptable. Again, as withHuck'sview of the riddle,the form of the speech act constitutesitsmeaning.Defenses of the book against these objections have advanced adifferentview of how to interpretthis novel andliteraturegenerally.Theyaskus to appreciate he novel's ndirection,specifically ts irony,with the narrative orm and vernacularstyle overriding he apparentface value of its episodes and language.At its publication,BranderMatthewsandThomasSargeantPerry udged HuckleberryFinnhighart because it exposes hypocrisy ndirectly.It "teaches ts lessonsbyimplication,"Perrywrote, and Matthewspraisedthe "self-restraintwith which Mr. Clemens lets Huck Finn set down, without anycommentat all,"absurdities ike the Shepardson-Grangerfordeud.8The novelhas meritbecause readersmustextrapolateanylesson forthemselves. Trilling's1948 introduction to the novel's first collegeedition effectivelycodified this view of the novel. The book'strans-gressionof genteel moralityexposes the limitationsof gentility.Itsironyallows hosewho read it "thoughtfully"o regardwith "ironyheHoward Horwitz 271


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assumptionsof the respectable moralityby which he lives."Huckle-berry Finn is thus a "subversivebook,"because it intimateshow anindividualmight "discard... the moralcode [one] has always akenfor granted."9 Its ironyconstituteswhat James M. Coxlatercalled a"rebellionn form,"enablingwhatHenryNash Smithcalled"fidelityto the uncoerced self."'1Wecansee thatbothapproaches o interpreting hisnoveltakeforgrantedan analogybetween significationand readers'subjectivity.The Concordcommittee's ormalismhas aclearontologicalanalogue:the readerwill imitate the text,becomingits image.Justas represen-tationsof coarsebehaviorcan mean nothingother than coarseness,readersof coarse representationsbecome coarse. Similarly,objec-tions to the novel's presentationof race assume that readers whoencounter racist language and characterizationswill be unable toenvision alternatives o bigotry.If in the formalisticapproachrepre-sentations instill and cement customaryassociations, n the ironicapproach epresentation ndermines hem. Theindirectionof Twain'swriting, wherebywords work againsttheir conventionalmeanings,releases the interpreting elf from its habitual dentifications.Those who censure the bookdo so preciselybecausethey believeit fails to have this effect. The ironical approach, in contrast,interprets HuckleberryFinn's apparentracism as a corrective toracism.Manystill argue, following Trilling, hat Huck's"sympathy"for Jim overcomes the boy'strained instinct to treat the man as hisnaturalinferior,and thus Huck can determine to steal him out ofslavery."1Leo Marxdiscovered in this "revolutionary octrine offraternity""a total repudiationof an oppressive society."'12 Huck'sfailure to sustainthis ideal ironically ignalsthe moralimperative opursue it. Tom'scruel burlesqueon the Phelps farm,Coxwrote in1966, exposes him as the "embodimentof the complacent moralsentimenton whichthe readerhas reliedthroughout he book";we inturn realize that "Tomis doing at the ending what we have beendoing throughout he book,"derivingpleasure rom humansuffering.Thus the racism of the plot's details-and by analogyour moralcomfort-is, for Cox, inverted,turnedagainst tself.13So too, in the view of many, s the minstrelsyof Jim'scharacteriza-tion. Even in the seminalcritiqueof Jim'sportrayal,RalphEllisonobserved that "frombehind this stereotypemask . . . we see Jim'sdignity and human capacity-and Twain'scomplexity-emerge."'14David L. Smithput the point succinctly:Jim'sactionsdemonstrate"thatJimis not 'theNegro.'Jimis Jim."'5On thisview,the character-272 Can We Learn to Argue?


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izationof Jimhelpsus to imaginethe capacityof individuals o escapestereotype, to act from experience not determined by precept, byculture.This effect does not negatethe book'sevidentminstrelsy,butresults instead because the novel's debt to minstrelsy and moregenerallyto racialistdiscourse is so palpable.The novel's"subtlety,"Smithwrites,makes us awareof ourculture's"mystificationf race,"even if readershave managedto resist this lesson. Ellison, similarly,while maintainingthat African-Americanreaders must inevitablyremainuncomfortablewith Jim'sportrayal, uggested also that the"ambiguities"f thatportrayalmightinduce "ambivalence"n whitereaders,which, if they can resist repressing t, might lead them tobecome awareof their "moraldentificationwith [their]own acts."16Accordingto these dialecticalreadings,the novel weakens ourcommitmentto phenomena like racialdiscourseprecisely by con-fronting us with the depth of those commitments. Through thiscriticallens, the novel performsa similaroperation upon the racialepithet. Scholars recognize that Huck's own use of the epithetremainsdenigrating,because reflexive.For example, directlyafterHuck reaches the Phelps plantation,Tom'sAunt Sallymistakeshimfor Tom. Pliable as usual, Huck is happyto be welcomed, but now,unawareof which "Tom"he is supposedto be, he must troll for aconvincing ie to explainhis apparentdelayin arriving.He blurtsoutthat his steamboatsufferedanexplosion.WhenAuntSally nquires fanyone was hurt, Huck replies, "No'm. Killed a nigger" (243).AlthoughmanipulatingAuntSallybythis lie, Huckdoes not questionits premise. Nor does he question Tom's use of the racialepithetwhen Tom explains why he is willing to compromise slightly hisobedience to his authoritiesand not requireJim to saw his leg offwhile escaping."'Jim's niggerandwouldn'tunderstand he reasons

for it, and how it's the custom in Europe;so we'll let it go"' (264). Ifthese instances typify usage of the racial epithet in the novel,nonetheless,in the ironicreading,the novel sensitizesreadersto theepithet's degradingeffects precisely because they encounter it un-adulterated. For Shelley Fisher Fishkin, the novel's unmitigatedrepetition of the epithet contributes to the irony that "leaves thereaderreeling.""7Onthisaccount, he novel'sironyweakensordinarylinguistic associations.HuckleberryFinn, then, subverts culturalvalueseven if Huck'sadventuresdo not have this effect on him. Thisis the thrustof Fishkin'scelebrated thesis in WasHuck Black?thatHuck's colloquial voice is that of Jimmy;the American voice isAfrican-American,even if the national voice and the narrativeHowardHorwitz 273


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bearingit repressthis fact.'"The novel'svoice modifiesour relationto national dentity.Such attenuation of cultural identity is the thrust as well ofarguments steemingthe novel'smostprofoundsubtlety, ts exposureof ournation's ontradictionsregarding ace,identity,and whatMyraJehlen has called "the ideal of individualfreedom."The "absolutefreedom"that Huck desires requires compromiseof either Jim'sfreedom or his own in protectingJim's;ndividual reedomconflictsin thisnovel with"socialresponsibilities."ehlenjudges HuckleberryFinn "peculiarly nsettling,"because it "standswitness to the impos-sibilityof any acceptableresolution" o these contradictions."9henovel'sunremitting mmersion in contradictionsmakes it what EricLott calls "immanentcriticism."Lott traces Twain's"ambivalence"towardAfrican-Americans;e recognized the curtailmentof theirrightsand opportunitiesbut also understoodthe satisfactionwhitesderive from their disadvantage,as exemplifiedin the popularityofminstrel representations.HuckleberryFinn's "simultaneousnhab-itance andcritique"of these pleasuresshow readers"how mplicatedwe remain in the contradictions f NorthAmericanracial ife."Thenovel is therefore not just unsettling but "unassimilable," ven"unteachable."20More broadly,Evan Cartonarguesthat the noveldiscloses a fundamental"instability"n literary identity.Twainex-posed the lie underlyingAmericanmyths, ike the mythsof freedomandequal opportunity, ut alsorecognizedthatliteraryperformanceis structuredupon a lie. The burlesque closing chapters"indict...[Twain's] wn novelisticenterprise."They depend upon the lie theyexpose, Tom'ssecret knowledgeof Jim'smanumission.Readersthusglimpse "theparadoxof [Twain's]dentityas social critic and truthteller"and,by extension,the wayAmericansdailytolerate lies aboutequityandjustice.21The effect of the novel, for these critics, is what Jehlen calls"dissonance."We nowrecognizean"ambivalence"bout matters ikerace and identity that we previously repressed.22Such argumentsabout the novel'sexposureof the contradictions f Americanidentityradicalizeearlier praise of the novel. Matthews and Perry foundsocialcritique emergingfromits narrative ndirection.Trilling ore-sawdeliveranceof the individual hrough he exorcismof convention,when the individual's elation to culture is made indirect. Jehlen,Lott, andCartonvalue the book fordestabilizingkey categories, ikeidentity, and therefore warningreaders against hypostatizing hat(identity,values)which is contingent.These views are more subtle274 Can We Learn to Argue?


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thanTrilling'sdea thatthe reader, ike at some momentsHuck,can"discard" nveterate values like racism. They nonetheless share abasic premise: good literature, mmanent criticism(whetheror notHuckleberryFinn qualifies),weakens the dominion of culture andhabit. Perhapsno simple catharsis issues from HuckleberryFinn'sexposure of the contradictionsthat constitute us as well as ourculture.23Yet the dissonance/ambivalences after all a form ofexorcism, abating ordinary dentifications.The book is "valuable"because it "grate[s]on our nerves."In "glimps[ing] he heart ofnationaldarkness,"Jehlen concludes, the novel may show us howbetter "to see in the dark.'"24

III. DISCIPLINE, FREEDOM, AND CITIZENSHIPCritics locate the value of HuckleberryFinn in the way its ironydestabilizes what RaymondWilliams called structures of feeling,

makingimmanent criticism possible.25A comparableemphasisonindirection-and alsoon its liberalizing ffect-lies at the foundationof modernliterary tudies.RichardOhmann,MichaelWarner,WallaceDouglas,David Shumway,and GeraldGraffhaveastutelyexaminedthe emergencesinceabout1860of ourdiscipline.26 hough,as Graffdetails, generalists and classicists resisted modern language andliterary tudies,neverthelessboth camps proclaimedsimilargoals: odevelop throughtheir rivalmethods what they called "mentaldisci-pline,"a term thatappears n every methodological ssayandliterarytextbook of the period. Wallace Douglas derides this idea as anadvertisingeffort to "createan academicreputation."Yet "mentaldiscipline"was no promotionalcoinage; t derivedfromthe classicalGreek idea of mental gymnastic and had long been the aim ofeducation in rhetoric and the classics. In the nineteenth century,writers as prominent as J. S. Mill and Herbert Spencer deemedmental discipline the aim of educationgenerally.27 he term encap-sulatesthe reasons hat humanists andacademicsgenerally)came tocall their fields disciplinesrather han, say,guilds.The idealsattend-ing the idea of mental discipline allowed scholars to contend, asHorace Scudderwrote, that literarystudy helps "makegood Ameri-can citizens."28

Exponentsof modernliterarystudybelieved that classicalpeda-gogy, with its emphasis on memorization and recitation, whosetedium was well documented, produced inadequate discipline instudents.Memorizingvocabularyand rulesof grammaraffordswhatJames Garnettof the Universityof Virginia alled"formaldiscipline,"Howard Horwitz 275


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little more than obedience to rules.29Twain himself parodied thisaspect of traditionalpedagogyin an 1887 essay, "Englishas She IsTaught,"which purportsto reprintstudent writing. Studentsseemadept at memorizingpassagesor rules but utterlyunable to applythem. Here's one example:"Acircle is a round straight ine with ahole in the middle." This definition is technically correct, butcontextually bsurd.Otherexampleswork n similar ashion."Parallellines are lines thatcan nevermeet untiltheyruntogether"; Russia sverycold andtyrannical."Twainconcludesthat students are "asglibas parrotswith the 'rules,'but [cannot]reasonout a single rule orexplain heprincipleunderlyingt. Theirmemorieshad been stocked,but not their understandings."30

Defenders of the classicalmethod viewed recitationas a means tomentaldiscipline; hey did not of course aimto producewhatTwaincalls here "brickbatculture,"whose members cannot fathom therationale for their actions and preferences.3'The scientific campobjected that merely formaldisciplinecould scarcely produce any-thing else. Traditionalstudy of rhetoric and classical languages,accordingto RichardG. Moulton,Professorof LiteraryTheoryandInterpretationat the Universityof Chicago,made literarymaterials"studiesof fact, rather than disciplinarystimulus to the imagina-tion."32 With literarystudy competingfor fundingwith other disci-plines, promulgators f what Moultoncalled "scientific riticism" ndwhat the president of the MLA in 1896 called "literary cience"extended their criticismto mathematicsand the naturalsciences.33The presidentof WilliamsCollege, FranklinCarter, old the MLA n1885 that "[i]nprocessesof mathematicsand science it is too oftenfixed rules that [students] follow."34 . V. N. Painter of RoanokeCollege charged that, as presently pursued, "the study of naturalscience consistschieflyin memorizing acts laid down in text-books,and possesses but little value as a disciplinary xercise. It does notgive the manifolddiscipline"affordedby what Theodore Hunt ofPrincetonUniversitycalled "criticalstudy"of literature.35"Literarydiscipline"uniquelytrains"reasoning, udgement, andtaste,"Garnettasserted, because, as a professorof educationat theUniversityof Michigandeclared, unlike "studiesof the scientifictype,"studies of literature and other humanistic fields "affectthemind as a whole, involvingboththinkingandfeeling, calling ntoplayseveraldistinct modes of intellectualactivity,and so producingwhatis knownasculture."36 Literarydiscipline"bring[s]ntoactionalmostevery facultyof our minds"precisely for the reasonthat literature276 Can We Learn to Argue?


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might seem an unlikelyarena for scientific method: its manifestlyimpressionisticquality,whichimpedes its quantification.This aspectof literaturewas not an obstacle to systematic tudybut furnished tsoccasion.37

Underthe influenceof HippolyteTaine's1863 HistoryofEnglish Literature, Anglo-American iterary scholars adopted anevolutionary iew of literature.The evolutionistsviewedliteratureasthe expression not of individualgenius (or at least not solely ofgenius),but of the characteror spiritof a race or nation(withthesetwo terms, as was typical of the period, used almost interchange-ably).38Theythus conceivedliterary tudyasa form of socialscience.WhatMoultoncalled"literarymorphology," inquirynto the founda-tion of the forms of literature"could analyze the evolution ofnational, racial characterand help to improve that characterbyproducing the right kind of readers, those possessed of mentaldiscipline.39Evolutionists n the social sciences soughtthe type of the nationand race. Likewise,literaryscholars iked to say that an author ikeWilliamShakespeare"stands or Englandand the English type."40Scholarsresistedthe "strictdeterminism," endering he individualareflection of national or racialcharacter, hat such a view arguablyimplied. Individualsare not mere "typesand symbols,"remarkedGeorge LymanKittredgeof HarvardUniversity,he renownededitorof Shakespeare,because persons do not receive impressions"uni-formly"and "mechanically."41 The variety of literatureproves theexistenceof what the presidentof the MLA in 1896 called"incalcu-lable"personality.42 he distinguishingpropertyof personalitywasthe imagination, the faculty that both produces and interpretsliterature.As evolutionists, iteraryscholarsdefined the imaginationnot as some sui generis phenomenonbut as a principleof variationand differentiation,analogousto idiom in language, inflecting thematerials reated n literatureand priorformsof expression.Moultonwrote that the imagination s neither mimetic of objects nor self-engendering. It "select[s among] conditions of life"; "the creativefacultyis . . . a sort of lens, focusinghumanphenomenafor betterobservation."43he imaginationfocuses phenomena by modifying"elementsof nature,"wrote Charles MillsGayley, ong-time depart-ment chair at the University of California,Berkeley. The artistthereby "liberates,emphasizes, and adjusts the properties of hismaterial."44The operationof the imaginationparallels hatof linguisticsignifi-cation-the fundamental mode of literature-which is the realHoward Horwitz 277


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reasonthatliterary tudyexercisesallmentalfaculties.Scholarsmadea virtue of the fact that literature s not an object found in nature.Withoutinvokingtheir contemporaryC. S. Pierce and his work onsigns,scholars ike BarrettWendellof HarvardUniversity elebratedthe fact that literature exemplifies the way language consists of"arbitrary ymbols," "purely arbitrary" blackmarks,"meaningfulonly conventionally.45Signification"s conventional,wroteKittredge."Words are conventional signs," with "no natural and essentialmeaning,""no character in themselves."Since, as Garnettput it,letters are simply signs of sounds, linked to them conventionallyratherthan necessarily,words do not imitate the objects or mentalstatesthey represent.46

We nowadaysassociatesucha view withthe linguistFerdinanddeSaussure.This generationof scholarsadaptedit from Hugh Blair's1783 Lectureson Rhetoricand BellesLettresandGeorge Campbell'sprobablymore currentPhilosophyof Rhetoric(1776).47Blairwrotethat "the connexionbetween words and ideas may,in general, beconsideredas arbitrary nd conventional."Campbellobserved,simi-larly, hat "not a naturalandnecessary,but an artificialandarbitraryconnexion""subsistethbetween words andthings."48 oth Blair andCampbellbelieved that words are to some degree consolidatedwithideas and objects.Blairfelt that language s ideallymimetic: namesfor objects "imitat[e] . . the nature of the object";"words[are]copies of our ideas."Without speculatingon the originsof words,Campbelldeclared that the "habitof associating he sign with thething signified"leads persons to imbue this associationwith "arelationadditional," s if signsand ideas are"naturallyelatedto oneanother,"elatedaxiomatically,erhapscausally rby "resemblance."49Probably following John Locke's view more, American scholarsinsisted upon, and celebrated,the nonmimetic natureof language."Words. . . are neither imitative . . . nor inevitable,"assertedWendell.50Moultonurged scholarsto emphasizethe waywordsare"associatedmages" hat throughconvention stand for ideas as, at aminimum, "tokens"or, in the ideal, "vitalmetaphors."5'We mustthereforealwaysrecognize, Kittredgeremindedreaders, he "essen-tially poeticalor figurativecharacterof language."'52With their emphasis on the arbitrary, igurative character oflanguage, these literaryscientists sound quite contemporary.Wemightthink that their view of significationundermines heir evidentpositivism,astheystroveto develop morphologiesandtaxonomiesoftypes of literature.It did not. This view of significationconstituted278 CanWeLearn to Argue?


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their positivism,with its primarygoal of inducingmentaldiscipline.The nonmimetic, figurativecharacterof languageand literatureiswhat made literary discipline "a higher discipline," exercising allmental faculties,for it requiresstudentsto determine the relationsamong disparate erms.53Since words do not pointto or imitate theirreferents,E. H. Babbittof ColumbiaUniversityexplained,we learnaboutthings "bytheir relations": twothingswhich lookjust exactlyalike may be quite different if they stand in different relations toother things."Readers are thereforecontinually"reasoningout themeaningof wordsfromthe context.""Thepupil is constantlycalledupon to form an opinion of the meaning of a word which he wouldnot knowif it stood alone,but which he has help to understand...from the context."54Literary discipline does not teach "doctrine," then, but cultivatescompetencein the indirection-shifting amongcontexts-that struc-turessymbolization.Literature s the optimalcourseof studybecauseit exemplifies hisprocess. "Representingife,"JamesRussellLowellwrote, literature"teaches, ike life, by indirection,by ... nods andwinks."55n the essay "Howto Tell a Story" 1895), Twainrecom-mended"humorous"toriesover"comic" toriesfor the samereason.Tellersof comic stories shout at you the core or "nub"of the story,lest you miss it. "Onlyan artistcan tell" a humorousstory,whichconcealsthe nub, requiring"thelistener [to] be alert."56 By trainingus to adapt to new contexts, which Huck cannot do with Buck'sriddle,literarydisciplineenables us to graspthe subtlestnod, wink,or nub. It thus cultivated "discrimination,"training faculties in"recombination of the proximate parts" of an "aggregate." Note thatdiscrimination, like its cousin term judgment, is here a resolutelypractical rather than metaphysical idea. Recombining elements andreapplying ideas to diverse contexts, the critical faculty remainsindebted to, but does not merely recycle, prior forms and tradi-tions.57The effect of literary discipline is to "liberalize us," as Lowell putit in his president's address to the MLA. By sensitizing readers to the"diversity"of experience and men's minds, it effects an "enlargementof ourselves," with literary study a kind of "foreign travel" thatbroadens sympathy.58"The ability to assume others' point of view isthe most valuable equipment that an education can give you,"declared Benjamin Ide Wheeler, president of the University ofCalifornia at Berkeley, in his 1907 commencement address.59 Thesheer content of literature accustoms readers to the experience ofHoward Horwitz 279


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diverse characters. Perhaps more fundamentally,sympathy is astructuralbyproductof disciplined reading,which involvesdiscern-ing the connections between experience and formal signs. Thedisciplinedreaderwas therefore"cosmopolitan,"ecausepossessingwhat Lowell and FranklinCartercalled, in their respective MLApresident'saddresses,"manysidedness."60Manysidednesswas felt to vanquishhabit andprejudice,and thisassaulton prejudice, long a staple of a certain (Cartesian) train ofwestern philosophy,introduced a metaphysicalidealism into thediscourseof modernliteraryscience. The prominentcritic EdmundClarenceStedmanmaintained hat criticismshould not "be taintedby privatedislike, or by partisanship."61urely,however,the disci-plined reader is partisan, n the sense of havingvalues and prefer-ences. One of the main goals of mentaldisciplinewas preciselyforpersons to be able to articulate he rationale or their values. But thedisciplined"habitof mind"should not be static, Moultonclarified.While the disciplinedthinkertries to differentiateamong types ofexperience and expression,the "static hinker,""possessedby fixedideas, or fixed standards,"igidlyassimilates"variedtypes ... to hisown conceptions.""62Suchrigidthinking s prejudice,and we must "strive o masterourprejudices,"wroteBranderMatthewsof ColumbiaUniversity, ne ofHuckleberryFinn'smostprominentdefenders.63The problem,how-ever,asWendell amented, s that "creedslongsurviveexperience."64To compensate, literary discipline was often imagined to releasereaders from ordinaryhabits of thought, which scholarsvirtuallyequatedwith the narrowercategoryof prejudice.It seems fairto saythat literarydiscipline,because it enhances readers'skill at recom-bining elements of experience, promotes "open-mindedness"or"keeps he mindflexible,"or even that it amounts o "self-discipline,"withpersonspracticedatcurtailingautomaticresponses o unfamiliarphenomena.65The idea that the disciplinedsubject,no longerslaveto dogma,has been "delivered rom all narrowness"s surelymelo-dramaticbutperhapsdoes not idealizethe effect of mentaldisciplineupon habit.66But the abilityto curtailprejudiceis not the same as"completeemancipation rom the past."The disciplinedsubjectcanbe said to be, like Trilling's eader,"unfetteredby tradition" nly ifthe imaginationand critical faculty transcendhabitualpatternsofthoughtratherthanrecombine hem.67If discipline nvolveseschewingthe very qualities hat constitute aculturedself-having a specific (disciplinedor imaginative)relation280 Can We Learn to Argue?


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to phenomena,the past, andtradition-then the disciplined subjectcan exist only by not being a subject at all. Yet a good number ofscholars deemed this idealized mode of being the preconditionforcitizenship. Wheeler reminded audiences that the term "liberaleducation"derivesfrom"freemen's raining"n Attica.Liberaleduca-tion will "free [students] from the bondage of prejudice [and]routine,"and thus "rescuemen from slaveryand makethem free."Liberalstudies will thus yield "American reemen,"who "initiate"and are "independent.'"68 Mentaldiscipline produces what Wendellcalled "sovereignman"and others called "a manhood true, free,brave."69Perhaps the need to compete with other human science disci-plines proliferatingin the era led scholars to hyperbole. A fewscholars consistently termed the ability to exercise faculties andnegotiate contexts "the discipline of an ordered liberty."'0Mostothers, however,viewed disciplineas "self-activity"xemptfromthelimits of context and transcendingconvention." The well-trainedreader inhabits"moreethereal air,"Lowell writes, as if the disci-plined reader is so elevated, as the Concord LibraryCommitteemight have wished, that it no longer inhabits a body.72This logic,continued in Trilling'sview that HuckleberryFinn frees us fromconventionandhabit,or in recent arguments hat this novel (or anygood literarywork)unsettlesidentityandtherebyourrelationto ourown convictions,suits the idea that the trained readeris freed fromprejudice, conceived as any subjective belief. So conceived, thedisciplinedreader of HuckleberryFinn or other literature is freedfrombeing oneself.

IV.ARGUINGLiterarydisciplineshallmake us free, I guess,but we should notethat such a motto summarizes the force of literary activity inHuckleberryFinn. Moses's escape, for example, is a parable ofsalvation rompoliticaloppression,specificallyracialoppression,andgenerally literaryperformances n this novel share the structureofthis parable.The sentimentalpoems, political allegorieslike that ofthe Dolphin,stories aboutrobbers,adventurestories like The Countof MonteCristo,the Duke andKing'sies abouttheirdisenfranchise-

ment, even partsof the Hamlet monologuethat they refashion-allrelatean escape by someone misunderstoodand mistreated.73Literarydisciplinein this novel, however,lacks the ratiocinationthat literaryscholars and Twain, n his essay on English education,Howard Horwitz 281


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vested in literaryactivity.Like Tom'sadventure ales, storiesin thisnovel serve as internalizedauthoritiesgoverningcharacters'actionsandmentalprocesses.Theyaresoprofoundlynternalized hat,whilewe might list the venues at which charactersabsorb them (school,church, the family,decorum, the birch, the overseer'swhip), thenovel rarely depicts the process of inculcation. Few characters-perhaps only Huck on the raft-actually read.They simplylive outtheir lives according to customary narrative structures, theirsubjectivization omplete andirremediable.Here surfaces a deep skepticismabout the prospectsfor culture.Charactersmerely regurgitatelessons; they act not of their ownaccord but ratheras emblems of the lesson. Tom's relationto hisauthoritiesexemplifies hisphenomenon.We laughat his inability oexplain o hiscohortswhatransomings, especially he ideaof keepingkidnapvictims"'tillthey'reransomed o death"'(10). His devotiontohis authoritiesprovidesthe gratuitousoccasionand instructions orJim'storture, and proves ludicrouslyriskyto Tom himself, who atnovel's end proudly displays the bullet he received pursuing hisadventurefantasies.Tom is as much in control of his authoritiesasanyonein the novel, yet his devotionto them is depicted from theoutset as laughableandcruel, and finallyself-destructive.As the Shepardsonsand Grangerfords bsurdlycontinue a homi-cidal feud whose originand rationalethey cannot recall, this novelrebukes not so muchthe rampantcrueltyof culture as its members'relationto its values. Whether the novel is being funny, tragic,orpitying,its ironyconcernscharacters'utter subjectionto the lessonsthey have internalizedbut do not understand.In this novel, one'srelationto models-discipline-is irredeemably ormal,as Garnettemployedthe term.Wholly possessed by authorities,one might say,characters are unable to apply principles in different contexts, torecombine principles, to figure out a riddle. This predicamentisdramatizedwhen Huck and Jimdebate first Solomon'swisdomandthen "speakingFranzy" 87). Eachinsists that the otherdoes not getthe "pint" 86) of the Solomonstory.In the end, frustratedat Jim'srefusalto yield to his superiorbooklearning,Huckquitsthe debateexclaiming,"'You an'tlearn a nigger to argue"' 88). Most readersprobablyjudge that Jim wins the argument.Critics like David L.Smith,Steven Mailloux,and more recentlyJehlenhave arguedthatalthoughJim is culturally gnorant,his syllogisms contendingthatSolomonis cruel and that a Frenchmanshouldspeak English like aman are "structurally ound." He wins a "rhetoricalvictory";his282 Can We Learn to Argue?


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premise is wrong but his logic is "exemplary."74Yet Huck and Jimargue in exactly the same way. Both accept a premise utterly and asself-evident, and insist upon it absolutely as the literal lesson, even aseach insists that the "'pint is down furder"' (86). Each confuses theliteral for the figural and is capable of neither understanding thedifference nor reasoning about premises he accepts intuitively.Huck's "sivilizers"proceed in the same way. They are incapable ofexplaining to Huck the moral lessons of the Bible. When Huck praysfor fishing equipment, for example, Miss Watson brands him "a fool.She never told me why, and I couldn't make it out no way." MissWatson's instruction itself (as Huck reports it) led the boy to pray forgoods and services: "She told me to pray every day, and whatever Iasked for I would get it" (12). When she catches Huck praying forspecific items, she cannot begin to explain Huck's mistake; she justknows that one prays for virtue and wisdom, not fishhooks (as if theprinciple really differs if the items requested are abstract). Huckrepeats both this obtuseness and contumely in the debate with Jim.Huck cannot explain to Jim the principle behind the Solomonparable because it seems so self-evident to him. These literate folksemploy a kind of evangelical version of what I called earlier formalis-tic interpretation. For them, Solomon's offer to cut the child in half,because so patently absurd, is in itself the sign that he is wise. Huckso takes for granted the middle term of the syllogism (that the child'sreal mother would waive her custody claim to avert such partition)that he cannot rehearse it for Jim and cannot imagine (nor tolerate)any other view of the parable. Huck regards the relation between thestory and its moral tautologically rather than syllogistically.Jim is no more adept at argument. He regards his counterexamplesas literally true. People who offer to sever infants are mean andmoreover wasteful of humanity; and it is only "'naturaland right'"that all humans speak in ways comprehensible to Jim (88). Therefore,Solomon is not wise and French people should speak English. Jiminterprets both cases formalistically, as Huck does Buck's riddle. Jimdoes not consider that there can be a difference between the form ofa speech act (offering to divide the child; the sounds we make whilespeaking) and the content of that speech act (Solomon means toidentify the mother; "chaise" does not mean "chaise" but an objectpeople sit on). No less than Huck, Jim believes that the meaning of aspeech act is self-evidently embodied in the speech act itself.Neither character, therefore, is capable of argument, only ofassertion. It is almost inevitable (Huck and Jim would say "natural")Howard Horwitz 283


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that Huckwould dismiss Jim'seffortsby meansof the racialepithet.Jimdisagreeswith Huck,but in this novel, there is no suchthing asrationaldisagreement;hereareknowledgeablepersonsandignorantones. Peoplewhodisagreewithus arebeneathus;theirdisagreementmarks hem as membersof an inferiorcaste, constitutionally nableto understand he superiorposition.Huck therefore dispatchesJimasdisputantby invokingJim'scastemembership, ust asJimwill latercastigateHuckas "trash"when the boy trickshim in the fog (95).Huck'sdismissalof Jimas unable to argueis repeated later,whenTomfinally agreesto let Huck pretendthatpickaxesare caseknives(otherwiseJim's scape might ndeed takethirty-seven ears).Unableto "leton"consistently,however,Hucksuggeststhatthey use a rustysaw-bladeto expediteJim'sescape even more. As exasperatedwithHuckas HuckwasearlierwithJim,Tomexclaims:"'Itain'tno use totry to learn you nothing, Huck"'(269). The point of these mirrorepisodesis notjust thatHuckandTomareincapableof arguing,butthat argumentor learning-the adaptationof logical structurestodifferent contexts-is impossible. In this novel, once we have ab-sorbed a model of values, we spout it inveteratelyuntil anotherovercomes us.The figure of Huck may offer hope of an alternative o Twain'sdystopic vision of literary discipline, but it is false hope. Huck'snarration ets us see the arbitrariness f conventions because he isincompletely adaptedto any one context. But he does not initiateaction;his goal, instead,he says repeatedly, s to avoid"trouble" nd"cost."He always nvokesauthoritative igures-Tom, Jim, Pap, orthe Widow-to try to dispel difficult situations. He appreciateshaving recourse to authorities/friends, or whom he yearns whenlonely,which he feels almost as soon as he is alone. WhereasTominvokes his authoritiesactively and deliberately (so do Jim, MissWatson,the Widow,and Pap), Huck tends to do so by default.ButHuck's orm of relianceonlyliteralizes he conditionof subjectivitynthisnovel,which Twain indsfundamentally iolent,illustratedn thescoldingsand beatingsthat the Widow,like Pap, administerswhenHuck muddles lessons (andwhichJim, too, delivers to his daughterwhen he thinks she disobeyshim [171]). Huckdoes become habitu-ated to the lessons. Goingto schoolgets "easier" 17), andhe growscomfortable at the Widow's-"I was getting sort of used to thewidow'sways, too, and they warn't so raspyon me"-even to theextent thathe appreciates he pointof laterbeatings.He remarks hat"the hiding"he receives for playing hooky "done me good and284 Can We Learn to Argue?


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cheered me up" (17) because he accepts as literal (as the Widowprobably does herself) what must be the Widow's conventionalcommentaryon the hiding. (Huck'sphrasingechoes these sorts ofphrases:"I'mdoingthis foryourown good";"Areyou unhappywiththese rules? Thiswill cheer you up!"[17]) Huck'senthusiasm or hisown punishmenthere means that, as Jim has with whites, he hasinternalizedher rightto exercisedominion overhim.Like Buck'sscoldingof Huck for his inability o graspthe riddle,the debates between Huck and Jim, and Huck and Tom epitomizethe novel's (naive) view of acculturation.In HuckleberryFinn,disciplining-the formationof the subject-precludes agency,as iffreedom is an absolute condition requiringunderived subjectivityfree of precedent, free of values,even thoughthis conditionevacu-ates (and thus nullifies) subjectivity. n this novel, once charactersinternalize models, they simply imitate them and can initiate nogenuine innovation in patterns of thought or conduct. The novelenvisionsnothing ikeliterary cholars'activementaldisciplinewhichrecombines nternalizedprinciples.Apparentdissent is merelymas-tery by a competingmodel. No one learnsto argue.Huck and Tomhave not; that is why they become exasperatedwith their socialinferior n the two scenes. They are capable onlyof reiteratingwhatwe readersidentifyas shibboleths,which they,like everyoneelse inthe novel, garble anyway.MissWatson and the WidowDouglas areno better arguersand teachers. Huck is never convinced by theirlessons; he simplybecomes accustomedto them until he reenactsthem and tries to transmit them, even though his efforts, likeeveryone else's,indicate his failure to understand hem.

V. SOCIAL HIERARCHY AND THE UNITY OF THE TYPE

The basicjoke, and also the tragedy,of HuckleberryFinn is thatcharactersreflexivelyrecycle storiesthey have absorbedbut cannothope to understand.All their beliefs strike us as superstition; heirrelation o parablesof Moses andSolomon s no differentfrom Huckand Jim's ear of ghostsandsnakeskins, rPap'sneed to wear the signof a crosson his bootsole.We laugh,or feel pity,or areappalled-orhave all three responses at once-as we witness characters' ntrap-ment by the stories that constitute them. Twain'smarginalian hisown reading consistentlylambaststhis derivativequalityof mentallife. He directsmuch sarcasmat religion,thoughhispointis broader.He wrote in a volumeby Francis Parkman hat "[t]hereseems to beno valuabledifferencebetweenthe superstitionof the priestand thatHoward Horwitz 285


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of the medicine men." Twain wrote in another history book, "TheBible was (& is) able to addle the ablest intellects in the world." Moregenerally, he was struck by a passage in one volume characterizing"life [as] an infinite syllogism from premises you have not examinedto conclusions you have not anticipated or willed."75In short, no one can be a believer and also, Twain remarked, "nota fool," "not a slave."76For Twain, any conviction bespeaks enslave-ment to precept. Jim'syielding to imprisonment and torture painfullysymbolizes this incarceration by mimesis. The obverse of this phe-nomenon is a compensatory impulse to exercise dominion overothers. Slaveryand its attendant racism, which the novel understandsto have evolved rather than ended since the Civil War,are prominent,historically specific manifestations of this phenomenon, which Twainregards as ontological." They symbolize the inevitability of socialhierarchization, with some persons commanding cultural capitalwhile others are visibly subjugated. Hierarchization occurs becausepersons desperately need to remind themselves of their own sover-eignty, to use the scientific literary scholars' term. Most interactionsin this novel involve the attempt by one person or group, fearingdominion by others, to subjugate others, often by violent means. MissWatson, the Widow, Pap, the King, and Duke, not to mention therobbers and killers populating the river,all labor to impose their willsupon others. Even Jim intuitively expects to wield such authorityoverhis daughter. When the girl, having unbeknownst to him lost herhearing, appears to disobey his command, Jim exclaims, as a preludeto slapping her, "'I lay I make you mine"' (171). "Mine" here means"mind,"as in "mindme," but the difference is negligible. No less thanPap, who thinks Huck's reward money belongs to him, Jim imagineshis authority over his child to be absolute and proprietary.

The displacement and transference of anxiety in Jim'sexasperationherearemoreobvious, ut nogreater,han n PapandtheWidow'streatment of Huck, or even in Buck's offer to instruct Huck duringthe riddleepisode.Feelingsubject o sundry regulations"mposedby others, Jim instinctively confirms his sense of self by imposing hisauthority on someone else. Given Twain'sview of how acculturationproceeds by enslaving ersons o habitandmyth), t makes ensethat the narratives circulating in this novel involve aggressive exer-cises of power. The legal fiction of slavery and the bilking escapadesof the King and Duke are only the most blatant examples of thispattern, which begins when the notorious "Notice" by "THE AU-THOR" threatens to prosecute, banish, and execute those who find286 Can We Learn to Argue?


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motive, moral, and plot in the book. Tom's idea that the gang ofrobbers will ransom kidnap victims to death typifies his adventures,even when they concern rectifying wrongs perpetrated against inno-cents. Surely the burlesque on the Phelps farm inconveniences thePhelps family as well as torturing Jim.Characters find solace in these narrative structures of domination,which seem to perform a necessary psychological function, providinga form of relief or escape. (This explains why "THE AUTHOR"threatens readers who find purpose, structure, and meaning in thenovel.) Fiction seems to be an acceptable place to release the anxietythat Twain associates with social disciplining. One striking feature ofthe closing chapters is that Tom and Huck are not punished for theirbehavior. I suspect that my own readers' children would be severelypunished for behaving like Huck and Tom. But after a brief glare ofdisapproval, the adults express relief to discover the real Tom andHuck. It is not enough to say that the boys are spared punishmentbecause they mistreat a slave, for they are not punished either forplaying the ransom games early in the novel, and here their adven-tures significantly discomfort the Phelps. Boys in Huckleberry Finnare expected to play out fictionally the cultural aggression thatcompensates for the fact that subjectivity is really enslavement tomimesis."7 The adults seem to need bad boys performing fictionalviolent acts so as to displace their simmering impulse to violence.79By sanctioning the boys' violent imagination, adults indulge their ownimpulse to violence, though this fantasy does not actually curtail theimpulse.In this novel, then, literary discipline is unrelievedly regulatory;there is only following "regulations,"no meaningful recombination ofthem. The best available response to literary discipline is aggressiondisguised as fiction. Twainthus doubts what his contemporary literaryand cultural scholars called the liberalizing effects of social disciplin-ing. Whether or not one thinks this novel is racist, I wish to suggestthat this question is framed by a larger one: to what extent are theinvidious distinctions that seem to accompany subjectivization trac-table? Racial hierarchization, as exemplified by Jim'ssuffering (whichhe does not exactly feel as suffering), symbolizes what for Twainis thepernicious refractoriness of hierarchization. This impulse to stratifi-cation has, of course, often been justified through classifying physiog-nomic differences as racial (and therefore as differences of charac-ter). For Twain, social hierarchization is inevitable, and racialdistinction is an emblematic form of it.Howard Horwitz 287


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Hiscontemporary umanistic cholarspromotedmentaldisciplineas undoing this basic structure. I mentioned earlier that thesescholars, as did virtually everyone in the period, believed thatindividualand nationalcharacterwere racial.They were hereditar-ians.8' In one concise example, Kittredgeattributed the "dismal""seriousness" f British Romanticsto "the Anglo-Saxon emper."8'Or, n hispresident'saddress o the MLA,ThomasPrice of Columbiaasserted without feeling the need to arguethe point that persons"judgmentof literature"s "deeplymodifiedby the sympathiesandtraditions f race," r"raceaffinities."82venthe ecumenicalMoulton,who criticizedthe study of nationalliteratures(which inclines stu-dents to jingoism),madehis case in racialist erms. Studyof "WorldLiterature"wouldbest "secur[e] he aimsof literary ulture,""broad-eninghumansympathies,astravelbroadens hemby bringingus intocontactwith racial deas different from our own.",83

Thoughhereditarians, hese scholarswere not generallynativist,as we understand he term fromJohnHigham's eminalwork.84Farfromseekingto purifythe Americanrace (whatever hat termcouldmean), they celebratedthe waythe Americanraceor Americantypewas composite. In his influential history of American literature,Moses Coit Tylerlocated the vitalityof the Americanpeople in its"multitudinous, ariegated"composition.85E. C. Stedmanwas en-thused that "the traitsof many lands""commingle"n our "nationaladmixture,"making"our civilizationassumethe composite type."86Wendelland Matthewsoften stressedthe mixed compositionof theAmericantype. Wendell advised teachers not to lament, at seeingmany immigrantsn theirclassrooms, hat "weof the elder traditionarearacepeacefullyconquered-overwhelmed."Instead, he teachershouldbe reassured hatimmigrantsmakeour "nationalharacter...composite.""'Matthewswrote that "there s no basis for the preva-lent belief that the people of the United States were once almostpurely English n descent,and thattheyhavebeen dilutedby foreignadmixture." Abundant"dmixture,"thecomminglingof... manybloods,"has constituted hisculturefromthe start.Americans houldappreciate their "enrichmentby alien stocks";"vigorous foreignblood"makes us "cosmopolitan.88In sum,literary cholarsclaimedthat mentaldisciplinewouldaltera basic racialist notion of how to organize society, broadeningAmericans'definition of nationalidentityto include and even wel-come foreignand minority nfluences. A few scholarswent further,disjoining he idea of nationalidentityfromrace. In a textbookthat288 Can We Learn to Argue?


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went through eight editions between 1900 and 1924, Wendellasserted that language and the ideals it bears are "more potent inbindingmen togetherthanany physicaltie," ike that of blood. Whatmakes immigrantsYankees s not their blood but their ideals, andtheirrefusal o "cherish"ncestral raditions.89 Wheelerwasyet moredirect,asserting,n a raresentiment or theperiod,that because of the"mingling of]bloods andtemperaments"nthe U. S.,"American.. isnot at allawordof race."The mostfundamentalliberalizing ffect ofliterary discipline, therefore, would be to supersede the idea thatsocietyshould be organizedarounddivisionsof caste or race.90Nonetheless, as hereditarians,scientific literary scholars envi-sioned achieving this transformationthrough what we might callracial dealism,and its illusoriness s of the kindthat Twainmade acareer of debunking.Their racial idealism derives from the wayreadersapprehendsigns. By recognizing hat diversephenomenaareinterdependent,readerscome to understandnotjustothers'perspec-tives but the way any experienceinvolvesrelationsamong disparateelements. Scholars ike Edwin Greenlawand JamesHanford calledthis phenomenon"theessentialunityof humanthought."91Unityofthought does not mean that everyone'sexperience is identical,butthat diverseexperiences belong to one universalphenomenon, andare indispensable to it. To maximize this effect, many scholars,though viewing individualcharacteras a type of national, racialcharacter, ecommended hatliterary tudybe comparative-a studyof world literature,not conceived or organizedaround nationalistcategories, since these were truly artificial,restrictive categories,obstructingreaders'experienceof the "unityof all literature."92Advocatesof "WorldLiterature" id not abandonthe categoryofrace;theyidealized t. GreenlawandHanford, orexample,promptlylink (in a melodramaticfragment sentence) the idea of unity ofthoughtto that of racial inheritance:"Theunity of humanthought,and the enormous,silentpowerof forces inheritedandwritten n ourblood."93Unityof thought,here, does not simply nvolve the humanrace rather than national races. It encompasses national races.Persons begin in this model as national types. Matthews, whocelebratedthe cosmopolitan omminglingof bloodin allraces,urgedthe critic to "perceive he race behindthe individualand . .. force itto help explainhim."Perhapsthe ultimatetaskof the critic,then, isto realizethe contributionof specificracesto the "resulting ace," hecosmopolitanAmericantype.94EvenWheeler,who with scarcelyanyprecedent denied that "American" is a word of race"and declaredHoward Horwitz 289


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that education should enable students "to rise as individual creationsout of the disease and thralldom of their parentage and the limita-tions of class and craft and caste," finally imagined these selfcreations as racial types. In America "all the races of Europe aremingling their bloods and tempers to bring into being the newOccidental man."95The notion of "the new Occidental man,"and the idea of commin-gling races generally, at once subsumes specific racial types andembodies their specific contribution to cosmopolitan character. Asublime economy of race is at work here. The human race to whichall individuals, most notably Americans, belong both transcends andtransmits racial types.96 "Unity of thought," best expressed andstudied in world literature, supersedes individual racial types bypreserving and distilling their best characteristics. Lowell named thiseffect "idealism," and deemed it the characteristic activity of theimagination, by means of which persons can be understood as at oncetypes and distinctive. "The imagination always idealizes," Lowellwrote; "in the representation of character, it goes behind the speciesto the genus, presenting us with everlasting types of human nature."The "type" here is not a reduction of individual characteristics buttheir refinement.

The office of the imagination is to disengage what is essential fromthe crowdof accessorieswhich is apt to confuse the vision ofordinaryminds.Forourperceptions f thingsaregregarious,ndarewont to huddletogetherandjostleone another. t is onlythosewhohavebeen longtrained o shepherd heirthoughts hatcan at oncesingleout eachmemberof the flockby somethingpeculiar o itself.

When Lowell writes that "idealized" objects and persons have been"stripped of all unessential particulars," he means that in becomingtypified, with unessential particulars purged, the individual entitybecomes more itself, "peculiar to itself," as if refined or smelted.97This racial idealism underlies literary scholars' imagination of personsas "sovereign," achieving through discipline self-mastery and abso-lute freedom from tradition and convention.This idealism explains a curious remark by Wendell when hesurveys the immigrants in his imaginary classroom. Seeking to credittheir contribution to the American race without reducing them toexotic "strangers,"Wendell declares that "these boys themselves arenot diverse."98 How can denying their so-called diversity respect theirdifference and thus individuality? If the boys merely add diversity to290 Can We Learn to Argue?


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Americanculture, then that culture remainsorganizedaroundcat-egories of caste. Wendell must imagine, therefore,that their racialspecificity s visibleyet unaccountable.Wendell'sparadoxical emarkbespeaks the precariousnessof the sublime economy of race bywhich he conceives the composite, cosmopolitanrace, and Lowellidealizes persons as at once types and peculiar to themselves.Cosmopolitanismdoes indeed retain (in order to overcome) thecategoryof casteas anorganizingprinciple.The idealismthatLowelldefined was scholars'methodologicalattempt to preserve the cat-egoryof caste,with its impliedhierarchization, et negate its conse-quences.

HuckleberryFinn doubts that the consequencescan be negatedand thus that literary discipline can liberalize. Characters n thisnovel instinctivelyneed to assert the difference in status betweenthemselves and others, so as to confirm their sense of themselves.Twain oresawno end to this psychology; haractersandpersonsareenslavedto structuresof belief and assertion.Criticsbefore me havenoted that the prospectsfor freedom in thisnovel seem bleak.Jehlenhaseloquentlyexamined hewaythe noveldramatizes he irresolvableconflict between a politicalfreedom sought by Jim and an ideal of"absolute reedom" hat motivatesHuck.99Twainrecognizesthatanyidea of "absolute" reedom is rendered incoherent by the fact ofsubjectivization,with the subject forged as a complex of habitualstructures; et he retainsas the onlyviable basisof individuality ndfreedom an ideal subject not constituted by habitual structures.Scientific literary scholars of the period, I have tried to show,embraced such idealism, and I argued earlier that even moderncriticsas astute asJehlenpreservesuchan idealwhen they judge thenovel immanent criticismwhose dissonancereleases readers fromtheir habitualstructures.The premisesharedby Twain,his contem-poraryhumanists,and modern critics is that subjectivizationtself(ratherthan particularculturalpractices) compromisesthe subjectand is brutal.The subjectshould be absolutely ree (even thoughallrecognize the untenabilityof this ideal). As I have suggested, thispremisehasbeen the criterionby whichHuckleberryFinn hasbeendefended or censured.But if the measureof this novel is whether ornot it succeeds in releasingus from habitual tructures, hen it fails tsdefenders'own test.The anxiety and compensatoryidealism I have been trackingexpress a desire for subjectivity without disciplining, withoutsubjectivization.'00uch idealismis misguidedand unnecessary.ItsHowardHorwitz 291


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initial assumption s that subjectivity s compromisedby the sheerfactthatit arisesthroughdisciplining tructures.Thispremise s self-negating,of course.Onlywithinformative tructuresdoes the subjectpossess a frame of reference in which to act. In contemporaryscholarlywork, the idea that disciplinary tructuresmerely restrictsubjectivityfinds authority in some of Foucault'sphrasing. The"procedures f individualization"by which "humanbeings are madesubjects" ery quicklycanbecome "mechanisms f normalization."'01Individualizationhus negates the individual,and we can read inmanyvenues todaythat discipliningmechanismsare formsof polic-ing, most profoundly forms of self-policing. In his late writing,Foucaultdissentedfromthis "carceral"eadingof his work. He triedto clarify hatsubjectivization,while an"invigilated rocess"n whichthe subjectcomes to monitor tself,involvesan"ensembleof actions"or "fieldof possibilities" atherthan merelya set of regulationsandrestrictions.'02 That is, "practicesof subjection" hroughwhich thesubject comes to experience itself may be in fact "practicesofliberation.'103 Literaryscholarsof Twain'sera employed a similarlogic in touting literarydisciplineas potentiallyemancipatory, incediscipline,astheydefinedit, involvesnotjustthe internalization(andthen rote repetition)of principlesbut their recombination n differ-ent contexts.Rather than being sheer subjection,then, disciplinemakespos-sible the modificationof context. Nonetheless, scientific literaryscholars retreated from their definition of mental discipline, andHuckleberryFinn even more radicallyviews subjectivityas enthrall-ment to conventionandhabit.The book'sdramaandhumor,anditsviolence,expressTwain'smourning or anunformedsubject,releasedfrom itself.The book's inaljoke, a cruelone, is on thosewhobaskinits idealism.When we laughat charactersgarbling heir literaryandculturalmodels, we are laughingat their subjectionto their ownhabitsof thought,which is theirsubjection o the operationof culture(which hisgarbling ignifies).Thepointof the debatesoverSolomon'swisdomand pickaxes,however, s that the apparentculturally upe-rior character s equallyenslaved to precept.We readerslaughingatcharactersare in preciselythe superiorculturalposition:convincedof our commandof cultureyet, to that exactextent, enthralled o it.As this novel presents the situation, all personages believe theypossess an idealized form of mental discipline-meaning all thinkthemselves free from the constraintsof culture-and to that veryextent they are doomed to repeat narratives and precepts. No292 Can We Learn to Argue?


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liberalizing is possible, on this account, no recombination of extantprinciples in new formations; nor, therefore, can there be meaningfulcritique of either values or identity. For Twain,proponents of literarydiscipline, and recent critics of this novel, identification is a form ofenslavement. The novel shows as well, however, how the alternativeadventure in self-imagination is only an illusion of freedom.Universityof Utah

NOTESI wish to thank the many people who have commented on drafts of this essay atDartmouth College, the University of Pittsburgh, and the Obert C. and GraceTanner Humanities Center at the University of Utah, where I was fortunate to be theVirgil C. Aldrich Fellow in Fall, 1999.1Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (New York:Penguin, 1985), 108-9. Hereafter cited parenthetically by page number.2 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish:The Birth of the Prison, trans. AlanSheridan (New York: Vintage, 1979), 305; Foucault, "The Subject and Power,"CriticalInquiry 8 (1982): 777.3 Evan Carton has rightly called this scene a "literary moment," and Jonathan Arachas even more astutely called Huck's actions in it the "impersonation" of aschoolmarm. See Carton, "Speech Acts and Social Action: Mark Twain and thePolitics of Literary Performance," in The Cambridge Companion to Mark Twain, ed.

Forrest G. Robinson (New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1995), 167; and Arac,"Huckleberry inn"as Idol and Target:The Functionsof Criticism in Our Time(Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1997), 53. Carton's specific reasons for aptlycalling the scene a literary moment are insightful and differ from mine. Huck isnegotiating among two texts, his letter to Miss Watson and his spoken words, whichare competing with the letter.4 On the novel's anticipation of these controversies, see also Steven Mailloux,Rhetorical Power (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1989), 118.

5 In the tradition of Thomas Kuhn, David Shumway has shown that literary studiesconstituted itself by defining its object of inquiry in a particular way and in terms ofspecific, operative assumptions. Literature was not merely writing, but possessedspecific formal and thematic characteristics, which generally were seen to symbolizeand contribute to American idealism and nationalism. Shumway's argument ispersuasive, but I believe that literary scholars touted most their cultivation ofparticular kinds of mental activity. See Shumway, Creating American Civilization: AGenealogyof AmericanLiteratureas an AcademicDiscipline (Minneapolis:Univ.ofMinnesota Press, 1994), 2, 15, 100, 120. For the general argument that disciplinesand their objects of study (in this case scientific disciplines) are defined by theirproblems and practices, see Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2nd ed.(Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1970).

6 Boston Transcript, in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, ed. Sculley Bradley,Richmond Croom Beatty, E. Hudson Long, and Thomas Cooley, 2nd ed. (1885;reprint, New York: Norton, 1977), 285.

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7 See Arac, 20-36. In particular, Arac persuasively demonstrates that celebrationsof Huckleberry Finn as "the great spiritual representative" (21) of America, andespecially "as an icon of integration" (21) have in effect permitted Mark Twain'snovel "to license and authorize the continued honored circulation" (29) of anexplosive racial epithet, if only because journalists and scholars inveterately refer toJim as "Nigger Jim," even though the appellation does not appear in the novel. Araccites 213 instances of the term in the novel (20).

8 See Thomas Sargeant Perry's review of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, in HuckFinn among the Critics: A Centennial Selection, ed. M. Thomas Inge (1885; reprint,Frederick, MD: Univ. Publications of America, 1985), 34; Brander Matthews,"Reviewof Adventuresof HuckleberryFinn,SaturdayReview"(1885),in HuckFinnamongthe Critics,28.9 Lionel Trilling, "Huckleberry Finn," in The Liberal Imagination:Essays onLiterature and Society (New York: Scribner's, 1950), 112 ("thoughtfully"; "subver-sive"), 113 ("irony"), 111 ("discard").10James M. Cox, Mark Twain: The Fate of Humor (Princeton: Princeton Univ.Press, 1966), 175. Cox affirms that Huck thoroughly inhabits the "conventions"

pervading the novel, like the idea that one can be a "bad boy" and "agood boy." Yetin the end, Cox writes, "the style is the inversion which implies the conventions yetremains their opposite. And this style is Mark Twain's revolution in language, hisrebellion in form" (169). Henry Nash Smith, Mark Twain: The Development of aWriter (1962; reprint, New York: Atheneum, 1972), 122.11Trilling, 109.12 Leo Marx,The Machine in the Garden:Technologyand the Pastoral Ideal inAmerica (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1964), 338.13 Cox, 175. Arac notes, however, that cultural custodians like Nat Henthoff andJonathan Yardley, and also some more academic interpreters, have been conde-

scending toward those who do not share the ironic approach and object to the novel'srepeated use of the racial epithet and the minstrelsy of Jim's portrayal. How, thesecommentators imperiously ask, can one fail to see that the novel is ironic? See Arac,63-77.14 Ralph Ellison, "Change the Joke and Slip the Yoke," in Shadow and Act (1958;reprint, New York: Vintage, 1964), 50. Through minstrelsy, Ellison observed, "the

Negro is reduced to a negative sign that usually appears in a comedy of the grotesqueand the unacceptable." Minstrelsy is therefore "a ritual of exorcism," though not ofthe Negro per se but of whites' guilt (48).

15 David L. Smith, "Huck, Jim, and American Racial Discourse," in Satire orEvasion? BlackPerspectiveson "Huckleberry inn,"ed. James S. Leonard,ThomasA. Tenney, and Thadious M. Davis (1984; reprint, Durham: Duke Univ. Press,1992), 110.16 D. L. Smith, 116. Ellison, "Change the Yoke," 49-50. For other discussions ofthe minstrel roots of Jim's portrayal see, for example: Bernard Bell, "Twain's 'Nigger'Jim: The Tragic Face behind the Minstrel Mask,"in Satire or Evasion?, 124-40; Eric

Lott, "Mr. Clemens and Jim Crow: Twain, Race, and Blackface," in The CambridgeCompanion to Mark Twain, 129-52; and Fredrick Woodard and Donnarae MacCann,"Minstrel Shackles and Nineteenth-Century 'Liberality' in Huckleberry Finn," inSatire or Evasion?, 141-53. Bell, Woodard, and MacCann do not believe thatparticulars of Jim's characterization invert the minstrelsy.

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17 Shelley Fisher Fishkin, Lighting Out for the Territory: Reflections on MarkTwain and American Culture (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1997), 197, 201.18 Fishkin, Was Huck Black? Mark Twain and African American Voices (NewYork: Oxford Univ. Press, 1993).19 Myra Jehlen, "Banned in Concord: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and ClassicAmerican Literature," in The Cambridge Companion to Mark Twain, 97.20 Lott, 140, 141.21 Carton, 163, 166, 168. Carton is extrapolating from Cox's argument that thenovel exposes the moral complacency of a middle-class reading public, which

accepts the social stratifications that the cruelty toward Jim depends upon, butcongratulates itself for feeling that the cruelty is unjust.22 On this point see Jehlen, 95; and Lott, 141.23 Jehlen, 97.24 Lott, 141. Jehlen, 114.25 Raymond Williams, Marxism and Literature (New York: Oxford Univ. Press,1977), 128.26 In addition to Shumway, see also Wallace Douglas, "Accidental Institution: Onthe Origin of Modern Language Study," in Criticism in the University, ed. GeraldGraff and Reginald Gibbons (Evanston, IL: Northwestern Univ. Press, 1985), 35-61;Graff, Professing Literature: An Institutional History (Chicago: Univ. of ChicagoPress, 1987); Richard Ohmann, English in America: A Radical View of the Profession(New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1976); and Michael Warner, "Professionalizationand the Rewards of Literature: 1875-1900," Criticism 27 (1985): 1-19.27 Douglas, 52. Andrew P. West is only one author who cites both J. S. Mill andHerbert Spencer on this point. See West, "Must the Classics Go?" North AmericanReview 138 (1884): 151-62.28 Horace Scudder, Literature in School (1888), cited in Shumway, 65.29 James M. Garnett, "The Course in English and its Value as a Discipline," PMLA2 (1886): 66.30 Twain, "English as She Is Taught," The Complete Essays of Mark Twain, ed.Charles Neider (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1963), 40, 41, 47. Conversely, here'san example in which the alleged student is contextually correct although factuallywrong: "The Constitution of the United States was established to ensure domestic

hostility" (45). The basic principle is the same: students do not grasp the relationbetween facts or rules and context. If Twain's depiction of student personae is at allaccurate, then despite well-publicized laments about American students' poor graspof, say, American history, little deterioration in student performance has occurred inthe last century.

31 Twain, "English as She is Taught," 47.32 Richard Green Moulton, The Modern Study of Literature: An Introduction toLiterary Theory and Interpretation (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1915), 349.33 Moulton, Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist: A Popular Illustration of thePrinciples of Scientific Criticism (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1888), 37; CalvinThomas, "Literature and Personality," PMLA 12 (1897): 301.34 Franklin Carter, "Study of Modern Languages in our Higher Institutions,"

PMLA 2 (1886): 19.3' F. V. N. Painter, "A Modern Classical Course," PMLA 1 (1884-1885): 114;Theodore W. Hunt, "The Place of English on the College Curriculum," PMLA 1(1884-1885): 126.

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36 Garnett, 73; William H. Payne, Contributions to The Science of Education (NewYork: Harper, 1886), 58.37 James Baldwin, Poetry, vol. 1 of An Introduction to the Study of EnglishLiterature and Literary Criticism (Philadelphia: Potter and Co., 1882), 4. For an

argument that literary study can be specifically "systematic," see W. T. Hewett, "TheAims and Methods of Collegiate Instruction in Modern Languages," PMLA 1 (1884-1885): 33.38 Here is just one of countless examples. Henry S. Pancoast begins his history ofEnglish literature with a remark that treats the terms nation and race as virtual

synonyms: "English literature, like English history, is memorable and inspiringbecause it is the genuine expression of a great race" (An Introduction to EnglishLiterature [1894], enlarged ed. [New York: Henry Holt, 1907], 1).

39 Moulton, Modern Study of Literature, 491. See also Moulton's introduction tohis The Literary Study of the Bible: An Account of the Leading Forms of LiteratureRepresented in the Sacred Writings, Intended for English Readers (1895), reviseded. (Boston: Heath, 1900), v.40 Pancoast, An Introduction to American Literature (New York: Henry Holt,1898), 332.41 Thomas, 303. George Lyman Kittredge, Shakspere: An Address (Cambridge:Harvard Univ. Press, 1916), 12.42 Thomas, 309. Nervous about the impulse to typification, scholars wrote manyessays affirming the existence of what Kittredge called "unaccountable individuali-ties" (Shakspere, 12). Thomas duly titled his president's address "Literature andPersonality." Payne praised E. C. Stedman and James Russell Lowell because, while

they sought the "underlying laws" of literature, they also "recognize[d] ... that theworkings of genius evade exact calculation" (32). Charles Mills Gayley of theUniversity of California, Berkeley, declared that "[t]he poetry of art is the poetry ofthe individual, of personal effort or thought, of yearnings rarely all comprehendedand less than half expressed, of conscious criticism of life" (Charles Mills Gayley andClement Young, The Principles and Progress of English Poetry, with RepresentativeMasterpieces and Notes [New York: MacMillan, 1904], vii). Painter wrote that the"personal element is of great importance" in the evolution of the literature of a race."From time to time, men of great genius appear, and rising by native strength highabove the level of their age, become centres of a new and mighty influence inliterature" (A History of English Literature [Boston: Sibley & Ducker, 1899], 4).

43 Moulton closes his book, The Modern Study of Literature, with an encomium tothe imaginative character of the critical faculty: "The creative faculty is assumed forthe appreciation of poetry and art, as well as for the producer. Every lover of poetryis himself a poet" (492). Moulton writes that the evolutionary scholar focuses on"[t]he differentiation by gradual process of specific varieties out of what was moregeneral, and the reunion of species in new combinations" (Modern Study ofLiterature, 7). Matthews wrote that language cannot be "fixt."In language "there isalways incessant differentiation and unending extension. To 'fix' a living languagefinally is an idle dream," and success in any such effort would be a "dire calamity"("Is the English Language Degenerating?" (1918), in Essays on English [New York:Scribner's, 1921], 8). Moulton, Modern Study of Literature, 461 ("select"), 348("creative faculty").

44 See Gayley's and Young's introduction, xxvii, xxxii.



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45 Barrett Wendell, "American Literature," in Stelligeri, and Other Essays Con-cerning America (New York: Scribner's, 1893), 101 ("arbitrary";"purely");Wendell,English Composition: Eight Lectures Given at the Lowell Institute (New York:Scribner's, 1894), 11 ("black").

46 Kittredge and James Bradstreet Greenough, Words and their Ways in EnglishSpeech (New York: Macmillan, 1901), 219, 221, 224. Garnett, 69.47 Less proximate sources were Adam Smith's Considerations Concerning the FirstFormation of Languages (1761) and John Locke's discussion of words as signs inbook 3 of Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690), ed. Alexander CampbellFraser (New York: Dover, 1959).48 Hugh Blair, Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres (1785; reprint, New York:

Garland, 1970), 1:123. George Campbell, The Philosophy of Rhetoric (1776), ed.Lloyd F. Blitzer (Carbondale: Southern Illinois Univ. Press, 1963), 258.49 Blair, 1:128 ("imitat[e]"), 2:7 ("words"). Campbell, 258 ("habit";"a relation"),

259 ("naturally";"resemblance").50 Locke stressed that signification occurs "by a perfect arbitrary imposition." Herecognized that "[w]ords, by long and familiar use, ... come to excite in men certainideas so constantly and readily, that they are apt to suppose a natural connexionbetween them." But this habit is wrong, he insisted, and moreover leads to confusion(Locke, 2:12). Campbell explicitly takes issue with Locke's view of signification and,more specifically, how the mind abstracts. The American literary scholars do notdirectly cite Locke, but neither do they cite Blair or Campbell on this point.Wendell, "American Literature," 101-2."'Moulton, Modern Study of Literature, 458. In Moulton's taxonomy, "tokens"aremechanical symbols for ideas, so taken for granted by long use that they are"lifeless." Vital metaphors intimate the affective reasons that words initially becameassociated with ideas, as when "vast"implies in Paradise Lost the emptiness andforeboding of the desert rather than merely "very large." Nevertheless, even if"vital,"the linkage of metaphor to idea remains conventional (458).

52 Kittredge and Greenough, 9.53 Carter, 8.54 E. H. Babbitt, "How To Use Modern Languages as a Means of Mental

Discipline," PMLA 6 (1891): 57, 60, 61. This author is not (and, so far as I candetermine, of no relation to) the notorious conservative Irving Babbitt of Harvard,who opposed the elective system instituted by Charles Eliot, the devotion of Americanacademics to the scientific models emigrating from Germany, and the growing emphasison research. Yet I. Babbitt's opposition to these desiderata of modern humanisticstudy were in the service of the common premise that the office of education is the"disciplining of the individual." Contemporary humanistic education, he com-plained, tended to encourage "a pure and unrestricted liberty," unbounded sympa-thy and individual indulgence rather than discrimination in sympathy. He shared thegoals of his contemporaries, but thought current institutional structures and empha-ses were ill-designed to achieve these ends (I. Babbitt, Literature and the AmericanCollege: Essays in Defense of the Humanities [1908], ed. Russell Kirk, new ed.[Washington, D.C.: National Humanities Institute, 1986], 74, 109).

55 See Edwin Greenlaw's and James Holly Hanford's introduction to The GreatTradition: A Book of Selections from English and American Prose and Poetry, inIllustrating the National Ideals of Freedom, Faith, and Conduct (Chicago: Scott,Foresman, and Co., 1919), xviii. Lowell, "Shakespeare Once More," Among My

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Books (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1882), 223. Thomas Wentworth Higginson madeessentially the same point: literature works like "real life," in which "the moral isusually implied and inferential, not painted on a board; you must often look twice, orlook many times, in order to read it ... We have to read very carefully between thelines" (Higginson, "Discontinuance of the Guide-Board" [1892], in his Book andHeart: Essays on Literature and Life [New York: Harper, 1897], 3).

56 Twain, "How To Tell a Story," The Complete Essays, 156.67ayne, 58 ("discrimination"; "aggregate"), 59 ("recombination"). While literaryscholars generally distinguished discrimination and judgment from mere taste, Ihave found no instances of judgment used in a way that requires the self to transcendthe scope of its knowledge, as one could argue Immnuel Kant's idea of judgmentinvolves.58Lowell, "Presidential Address," PMLA 5 (1890): 18, 21. Moulton, Modern Study

of Literature, 374.59 Benjamin Ide Wheeler, "The Solvent of Human Sympathy," in his TheAbundant Life, ed. Monroe Deutsch (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1926), 58.60 Lowell, "Presidential Address," 20; Carter, 19. As Wheeler put the point: "Thetrue interpretation of literature or the appreciation of any other form of human art,sculpture, painting, or music, is a process of entering into spiritual accord by thesolvent of human sympathy" ("Solvent of Human Sympathy," 56-57).61 Edmund Clarence Stedman, Poets of America (Boston: Houghton Mifflin,1885), 26.62 Moulton, Modern Study of Literature, 256, 7, 257.63 Matthews, "Gateways to Literature" (1909), in Gateways to Literature, andOther Essays (New York: Scribner's, 1912), 27.64 Wendell, "Stelligeri," 12.65 Matthews, "Gateways to Literature," 28. Thomas, 317, 310.66James MacCalister, "The Study of Modern Literature in the Education of OurTimes," PMLA 3 (1887): 16.67 See the editor's preface to Painter's A History of Education, ed. William T.Harris (New York: D. Appleton, 1897), xii. Painter, 325.68 Wheeler, "The Liberal Education," in The Abundant Life, 175-78 ("liberaleducation"; "freemen's training"), 183 ("rescue men"). Wheeler, "What the Univer-

sity Aims to Give the Student," in The Abundant Life, 187 ("free [students]"), 187-88 ("American freemen"; "initiate";"independent").69 Wendell, "Stelligeri," 15; MacCalister, "The Study of Modern Literature," 16.70 Greenlaw and Hanford, xix.71 Painter, "Modern Classical Course," 112.72 Lowell, "Presidential Address," 19.73 Amid the scrambling of Shakespeare's words, these themes do emerge piece-meal. The bare fact of existence ("To be, or not to be") "is the bare bodkin / Thatmakes calamity of so long a life." The King and Duke's "Hamlet" later asks, "For whowould bear the whips and scorns of time, / The oppressor's wrong, . . . / The law'sdelay" (150-51).74 D. L. Smith, 111. Mailloux, 75. Jehlen, 100.75 Francis Parkman, The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century, part2 of France and England in North America: A Series of Historical Narratives(Boston: Little, Brown, 1880), 93. Twain inscribed this volume, "Mark Twain 1881."Andrew D. White, A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom



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(New York: D. Appleton, 1901), 2:24. Letters from a Chinese Official: Being anEastern View of Western Civilization, ed. G. Lowes Dickinson (New York:McClure,Phillips, and Co., 1904), 29. This passage is one of the few that Twain underscoredin this volume. The Parkman, White, and Dickinson volumes are all held in the MarkTwain Papers of the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley. Ithank the Mark Twain Project for permission to cite from them.

76 Inscribed in White, 2:321, 320." On this point see Cox, 175; Laurence B. Holland, "'A Raft of Trouble': Word andDeed in Huckleberry Finn," in American Realism: New Essays, ed. Eric J. Sundquist(1979; reprint, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1982), 80; and ToniMorrison's introduction to Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (New York: OxfordUniv. Press, 1996), xxxvi.78 Maintaining the distinction between fictional and social realms is important inthis novel, and is what spares the boys from punishment. One might say that Boggs,in contrast, is murdered by Colonel Sherburn because he confuses fictional andactual contexts. One witness to his barrage of insults against Sherburn attempts to

minimize them by saying, "'He don't mean nothing"' (156). The temporal boundarythat Sherburn sets is also generic: after one o'clock, anything Boggs says will meansomething. Similarly, Buck Grangerford is sacrificed to his family's confuseddevotion to a fiction (the feud) as real.79For an extensive discussion of the social significance of the "bad-boy boom," seeMailloux, 100-29. Focusing on the reception of Huckleberry Finn, Mailloux empha-sizes late nineteenth-century culture's fear of the bad boy. His discussion suggeststhat Twain's inversion of this pattern in the novel, with adults tolerating and evenappreciating aggressive adolescent narratives, was incisive parody. Twain's use of thebad boy trope is no doubt parodic, but its end, in my view, is more tragic than critical.80 This term, meaning that character traits can be inherited and are visible incorporeal features, underlies the more general idea that racial difference affects thecustoms or temperament of groups. For a discussion of hereditarianism in Americaafter the mid-nineteenth century, see Mark H. Haller, Eugenics: HereditarianAttitudes in American Thought (New Brunswick: Rutgers Univ. Press, 1963).8' Kittredge, Shakspere, 27." Thomas R. Price, "The New Function of Modern Language Teaching," PMLA16 (1901): 88.83 Moulton, World Literature, and Its Place in General Culture (New York:

MacMillan, 1911), 448.84See John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860-1925 (1955; reprint, New York:Atheneum, 1973).85 Moses Coit Tyler, A History of American Literature (New York: G. P. Putnam,1879), 2:318.86 Stedman, 7.87 Wendell, Liberty Union and Democracy: The National Ideals of America (NewYork: Scribner's, 1906), 9, 11.88 Matthews, "The American of the Future" (1906), in The American of the Futureand Other Essays (New York:Scribner's, 1911), 14, 15, 16. Gayley and Young (4) and

Painter (History of English Literature, 11) are a few others who note the compositecharacter of the so-called English race. I have encountered one literary s

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Can We Learn to Argue