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Welcome back to The Invisible College, my series of literature courses for paid subscribers. The introduction to and schedule for the 2025 season is here. The 2024 archive is here. This episode, of which the first 10 minutes are free, is the second in a 14-week sequence on the American novel. It concerns The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. We discuss the novel’s regionalist satire on provincial Christian America, its realist critique of Southern Romanticism, its Romantic idyll of the Mississippi, and its modernist use of vernacular and psychology. We contemplate the Book of Exodus as paradigm of American literature, Twain’s twist on Emersonian self-reliance, and his re-founding of a true Christian ethic outside of Christian civilization. Finally, we read four critics on the novel: T. S. Eliot on its mythic resonance, Ralph Ellison on its Romantic vision of blackness, Jane Smiley on its racist inferiority to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and Toni Morrison on its modernist exposure of racism. Please like, share, comment, and subscribe! The slideshow corresponding to the episode can be downloaded behind the paywall: