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Originally Posted by
Kurosawa Fan
Irish, let's just recap for a second.
Wow. Feeling a little defensive about that English degree, are we? Look at the bright side, KF. At least now you can tell people you've gotten some use out of it.
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You don't get to call anyone professorial after making such an awkward appeal to authority, and your own authority at that.
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I wasn't being condescending. You're reading into something that isn't there. I say this because when I'm being condescending I'm usually doing it on purpose, with the intention of causing harm. You might be able to tell that I am struggling not to fall into that mode right now.
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You'll have to forgive me for assuming that you didn't know what a picaresque novel is. Most people don't. It's not exactly something that comes up in casual conversation. With theory and jargon, I learned long ago it's best to assume someone does not have the same point of reference as I do.
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First, Huck Finn isn't a strict picaresque novel. It shares common threads, but also strays from the genre in many ways. Second, it is not a staple of the picaresque novel to derail a character arc, something I cannot be dissuaded that Twain does with Huck when Tom arrives. You can have no character arc, and that occurs in many early examples, but again, Huck most certainly is evolving as a character throughout the journey. What comes before Tom is a beautiful, complex bildungsroman ...
You're raising three or four points there, and all of them are arguing against the idea that Finn is a picaresque novel in toto or in part. I don't think I am misreading.
So this, then, doesn't follow at all:
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You then tell me you think it's picaresque, something I already conceded.
You didn't concede anything. In fact, you took pains to argue against the point.
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You're right that I jumped to the conclusion that you were primarily concerned with narrative. I did this because neither you nor Dead discussed any other aspect of the novel. At all. Even after multiple opportunities to do so. Even before I leapt into the conversation. And again afterwords. Not one word.
You can argue this was a hasty conclusion, and I wouldn't necessarily disagree. But by the same token, what other conclusion was I supposed to draw?
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I'm of the opinion that, while literary context, political atmosphere, historical influence and perspective, and mastery of prose all have a place in analysis and all bring value to a work, it is possible to critique each facet individually.
Yeah. This is the take that I think is deeply flawed. As I said. It invites modern bias and is extremely limited to the point of being meaningless.
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Unless you would like to provide more evidence as to why Huck was incapable of saving Jim himself like DaMU did two posts above arguing the contrary (at this point, you've sort of proved DaMU's point ...
Oh, dude. Seriously? Why would I even bother?