Doctoral Dissertations
Date of Award
8-1992
Degree Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy
Major
English
Major Professor
William H. Shurr
Committee Members
Allison R. Ensor, George Hutchinson, Chauncey Mellor
Abstract
One of the most important factors for successful writing is how well writers manage their rhetoric. The extreme popularity of Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin and Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn proves how acutely the authors perceived their audience's mentality and how effectively they played on it. Racial relationships were an extremely controversial subject around the Civil War. The important function of black characters in the above works suggests Stowe's and Twain's courageous attempt to wrestle with the provocative issue of race. Recently these writers have been criticized for racist tendencies. Such criticisms result from paying too much attention to the surface of the texts, the surface which reflects the authors' sincere effort to respond to their rhetorical situations, committing themselves to the convention of their contemporary audience in order to construct a communication channel. Underneath the racist surface of their texts, Stowe and Twain sublimate an innovative vision of unconditional human equality. Using various rhetorical strategies, these authors help their audience confront the absurdity of racism. The dialectics between the racist language and the anti-racist message of their texts creates a dynamic force that spurs the readers into reconsideration of their values and into action. Recognizing that Christianity is the foundation of most of their readers' mindset, Stowe and Twain connect their rhetorical issue to Christian theology to reinforce their message. Their thorough analysis of the factors that have caused the corruption of American Christianity, including American politicians' manipulation of the sacred significance of religion for secular purposes, reflects their auctorial intention. They intend to disillusion their audience about its misunderstanding of God's support of racial inequality. Besides using dialectical strategies and Christian theology, Stowe and Twain, who perceive the limitations of language, which is forged by contemporary ideology, use silence, the blanks of linguistic code, to energize their messages. The pregnant energy behind the linguistic code enables the readers to emerge from the womb of conventional racist ideology into the fresh air of unconditional human equality. The rhetorical reading of the two works might lead some mistakenly to believe that this interpretation reduces literary works to mere rhetorical propaganda texts. However, ironically, this seemingly negative aspect of rhetorical theory most effectively reveals the writers' literary talent for creating texts which reach and challenge the audience artistically while espousing a propagandistic goal.
Recommended Citation
Kim, Bong Eun, "Race and rhetoric : Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's cabin & Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. " PhD diss., University of Tennessee, 1992.
https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss/10934