Huck Finn, ou le triomphe du mineur

Abstract

Mark Twain’s pen-name suggests his dual vision, marked by the tension between major and minor in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, told by a child-narrator, who loves to play truant. Dialogism, the carnivalisation of the text, are so many techniques requiring clear-sightedness, empathy, and the revision of prejudices. Shakespeare’s language, when travestied by bombastic ignoramuses, may be the most significant example of this narrative duality. While mocking the appalling actors, these cues make fun of the British Bard and of the highbrow culture which Twain did not prize as much as the low-brow minstrel-show. Another of popular culture, the circus on which Huck sheds a naive gaze, fooled as he is by the faked clumsiness of a virtuoso clown who brings him to bear an unconditional faith for these minor arts. Nevertheless, behind the perpetual play, Huck learns to recognize moral ugliness, and to become indignant at injustice. This gaze and this voice, which belong to a free child, a rebel against « sivilisation », opposed to those of his friend Tom, taken up by the adult world of canonical « authors », whom Twain abhorred, allows him, using many a stylistic and linguistic unlikelihood—examined in this article through the micro-analysis of excerpts—enable Twain to transgress taboos and publish what was named the first American novel. Through this duality between major/minor, adult/child, conformism/rebellion, learned language/ vernacular, linguistic « mistakes », through the dual voice and gaze, and in the victory of the minor—the child refusing compromise or submission and flying to the « Territory »—Twain succeeds in bringing a so-called children’s book to the status of a major book in postcolonial American literature.