Racialized Spaces: A Spatial Analysis of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Abstract

Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn, a canonical work of American literature, is characterized by its emphasis on space and its connection to racial issues. Following from this and considering the so-called "spacial turn" in cultural and literary studies witnessed in recent decades, the present dissertation aims to analyze the representation of space in the Huckleberry Finn as a means through which the author depicted the racial tensions and segregation governing the American context in which the novel is set. Drawing on spatial literary studies as well as critical race theory, the study contends that narratological elements -and particularly here, space- encode socially embedded meanings and reflect underlying racial tensions. To this end, the dissertation begings by problematising narrative space as a key narratological category, unpacking its social significance within the American context of the nineteenth century. This is followed by a critical interrogation of the concept of "race" through the lenses of scholarly work linked to colonial discourse and Critical Race Theory. The socially construed nature of both "space" and "race" justifies a joint study thereof, as illustrated by theoretical framework provided by Racial Space Theory. Finally, the main section of the dissertation will be devoted to exploring how race and space intersect in Twain's Huckleberry Finn, an how the novel's spatial configurations become symbolically charged, serving as signifiers and conduits for racial meaning