"A white man's inadequate portrait of a slave" : minstrel shows and Huckleberry Finn /

Abstract

In addition to the tall tale, Southwestern humor, and the picaresque tradition, Mark Twain was fascinated with and captivated by minstrel shows. He watched them as a boy growing up in Hannibal, Missouri; he saw them performed when he worked in California and even during the years when he was writing Huckleberry Finn from 1876 to 1884. Minstrel shows had a powerful and far-reaching impact on how white Americans viewed blacks in Twain's lifetime, and we can still see the traces of minstrelsy in our time as well in movies and in music. This thesis will examine to what extent antebellum minstrel shows influenced Mark Twain's "great American novel," and how he used elements from these shows to systematically undermine racist caricatures of African Americans. In Chapter One, I explain the history of the minstrel show as well as Twain's experiences with and feelings about this entertainment form. I discuss the major stock characters found in minstrelsy and the originators of "burnt cork" comedy, and I offer excerpts from many of the most popular antebellum minstrel songs that Twain would have heard. I also explain how minstrelsy handled the subjects ofrace and slavery. In Chapter Two, I probe the multiple parallels between minstrelsy and Huckleberry Finn in order to demonstrate how deeply entrenched Huck Finn is in minstrelsy, focusing on how Twain adopts the minstrel show's tripartite structure, its comic dialogues, and some of its major themes. Lastly, in Chapter Three, I discuss Twain's anti-racist intentions for the novel by showing how Twain undermines negative minstrel show stereotyping throughout the text, focusing largely on Jim's role and how other characters treat him.