De same ole Huck – America’s speculum meditantis. A (p)re-view

By common agreement, Huckleberry Finn is not only the most American boy in literature, but is also the character with whom American readers of all ages tend to identify most readily and most intimately. Against ready-made assumptions, the paper investigates the protagonist’s unique constitution, modus operandi, and existential appeal. As a passe-partout to the text, it is suggested that Huck is at one and the same time, and as a primary rather than a secondary phenomenon, a small boy as well as a full-grown man. An apparent repository of classically definable unnecessary desires, informed by a combined Carlylean-Melvillean-Whitmanesque discourse of the (magical) mirror, Twain’s figure in the carpet emerges as a nuanced negotiation and transposition: speculum meditantis – mirror of one meditating, speculum vitae humanae – mirror of human life, speculum totis paria corporibus – mirror equal to the body of the country at large, and ultimately hyperbolically as utilitarian speculum humanae salvationis

Between habits of the heart and copulation of clichés: Some popular American stories, mores and shibboleths

From the very beginning, all manner of ideas, concepts and conceits have been advanced to explain America and Americans – as much to themselves as to others. The paper presents a historical- literary compilation of popular notions of ‘Americanness’ in the guise of random de Tocquevillian observations in general circulation. This is to provoke the question about the degree to which this kind of pervasive discourse may reflect the so-called habits of the heart, as against how at a certain point it may lapse into a Nabokovian copulation of clichés

Vertiginous pull of negative rhetoric: The American “No! In Thunder”

The paper presents a sample historical-literary survey of a specific popular idea of the gist of ‘Americanness’ in the guise of condensed observations in broad cultural circulation. This is to provoke the question about the degree to which this kind of discourse may reflect the so-called habits of the heart (de Tocqueville [1835-1840] 1966: 264), as against how at a certain point it may explode – to borrow from Paul de Man (1979: 10) – into “vertiginous possibilities of referential aberration”

Usable vs. abusable past. A reflection apropos of two (publication-politicization) dates in the history of U.S. literature

Using as examples two radically different classic texts, Washington Irving’s “Rip Van Winkle” and Stephen Crane’s The red badge of courage, the article reflects on the scope (limits) of politicization of literary discourse in the guise of direct contextualization and radical recontextualization. In the analytical part, it is argued that both works belong properly to the realm of existential facticity (Faktizität) rather than historiographic factuality (Tatsächlichkeit)

Hawthorne’s perspectival perversity: What if “Wakefield” were (about) a woman?; or, credo quia absurdum

Although “Wakefield” opens as a leisurely mnemonic act, it turns into an intensely emotional affair. However, the stance of moral indignation and, indeed, condemnation adopted in many readings of this classic tale seems to be a monological trap, an interpretive ride along Einbahnstrasse. The present close re-reading draws on the combined appreciation of perversity as (i) formal figuration in which the bearings of the original are reversed, (ii) attitudinal disposition to proceed against the weight of evidence (the so-called ‘being stubborn in error’). Building on this logic, the paper offers a transcriptive anti-type response to Hawthorne’s title. It is meant as a detour of understanding and a reclamation of a seemingly obvious relational and denotative proposition. Inasmuch as “Wakefield” is a distinctive rhetorical performance, foundationally a story about story-telling, its title can be naturalized as identifying the story-teller. Even if this does not come across as lucius ordo, it is argued that the order of reappropriative and be-longing signification is that of Mrs. rather than – as is commonly believed – that of Mr. Wakefield. Informed by object permanence and a peculiar looking bias, “Wakefield” proves to be her-tale rather than his-story. As a secret sharer and a would be-speaking gaze, the wife turns out to be a structural and existential pivot of the narrative. More broadly, Mrs. Wakefield can be appreciated as coarticulator of a ventriloquistic logos and choreographer of a telescopic parallactic vision. Unintentional challenge to both the heresy of paraphrase and the aesthetics of astonishment, this is ultimately to proffer a radical Shakespearean/Kantian re-cognition that in certain spheres there obtains nothing absolutely ‘moral’ or ‘immoral’, and it is only a particular perspectival discourse that may make it so

Dubious American license: The first in flight

The symbols, colours and slogans on vehicle registration plates are part and parcel of the United States iconography. While not everybody relates readily to Ohio’s license plate motto “Birthplace of Aviation”, everybody seems to know North Carolina’s motto “First in Flight”. (Although the Wright brothers came from Ohio they chose North Carolina as the site for their 1903 groundbreaking experiment.) With the open horizon as the obligatory conceit of the U.S. landscape, North Carolina’s license plate projects a homonymic mis-association with the dominant motif of American popular cultural discourse recognized emblematically by Leslie Fiedler (1960: 318) as the razzle-dazzle of escape

The dis-closure of "Huckleberry Finn:. Natura naturata vs. lumen naturale, lighting out vs. Lichtung

Against the popular frontier-wilderness discourse, the paper offers to discuss one of the most celebrated lines in all American literature, Huck Finn’s closing resolution to light out ahead of the rest, as an adverbial-existential rather than as a categorical-territorial affair. Drawing on Heidegger’s notion of “resoluteness”, it is argued that the novel discloses at the very end – ‘lights out’ – a mode of presencing rather than of disappearing. More broadly, this is to show that the received image of Huck as a maverick dodger, incorrigible vagabond and, most emphatically of all, as a celebrant of Nature is not borne out by the reality of the text and is informed instead by the dynamics of cultural (auto-)stereotyping