My children, here in Connecticut, have also read the above in school
(maybe there is a national conspiracy) and have also done the Canterbury
Tales and the Athurian legend.  Chaucer caused some negative reaction,
but I'd hesitate to call it obstinacy.  MT, on the other hand, got rave
reviews at our house.  I had told them how much they'd enjoy it and even
that didn't cause them to reject it out of hand.

Professor Sponberg makes the excellent suggestion that the text be read
aloud for a bit.  I agree, especially if you can do justice to the
accents.  I was first attracted to Dickens by movies and the wonderful
language of the London street people as portrayed by the actors.

It is difficult to imagine young people (especially boys--ok, so I'm
sexist) unable to relate to Huck and Jim.  True, I grew up on the
Mississippi, or next to it, anyway, but even my Yankee children
understand these two perennial favorites (maybe because they grew up in
the shadow of MT's Hartford home (which now looks super in its holiday
trim, btw) but that's a bit of a stretch).  If students cannot know and
love/admire/hate Twain's people, how will they ever cope with Henry
James' or Shakespeare's?

In closing, a remark on the recent "n"-word discussion.  I read Huck for
the first time when I was 12 or 13 years old, a child of the deep south
which was just then (mid-50's) becoming the "New South."  We were taught
*never* to say the "n"-word, and I don't believe that I ever have
actually said it.  Still, we knew that others had used it, did use it
and would probably (unhappily) continue to use it.  One doesn't have to
be an honor student to appreciate historical and literary context,
however.  Surely, students are not shocked/offended by that (or any)
word now more than they were 35 years ago.  Are they?

Tom Flaherty
Central Conn. State University