The author argues for the study of literature as a training ground for the kinds of thinking on which moral reasoning depends. The book combines postliberal narrative theology, especially Stanley Hauerwas's Christian ethics and Alasdair MacIntyre's idea of traditional inquiry, with recent scholarship in literature and ethics, including the work of Martha Nussbaum, J. Hillis Miller, Wayne Booth, Jeffrey Stout, and Richard Rorty. -- book cover.

Twenty-five essays written by a group of scholars which reassesses the status of Twain's Huckleberry Finn in American literature and in contemporary American culture, reevaluating past scholarship and exploring new directions. A biography of the book's first hundred years (in 1985).