ch. 1. Blackness in the fantastic world of old Southwestern humor -- ch. 2. Demonic vision and the conventions of antebellum Southern fiction -- ch. 3. "A plan to wake the devil": race and aesthetics in the tales of George Washington Harris -- ch. 4. Tom Sawyer: the making of a safe world -- ch. 5. "A prisoner of style": the uses of art in Huckleberry Finn and Pudd'nhead Wilson -- ch. 6. The limits of humanity in the fiction of William Faulkner -- Conclusion: Recent American writings: the leveling of racial vision.
