Rewriting the vernacular Mark Twain

This revionist study of Samuel Clemens's literary aesthetics and politics takes its ultimate justification from a maxim by the author himself. It asks readers, as Clemens did in his preface 'The Innocents Abroad', to read with their 'own eyes' instead of eyes blurred by postmodern and modern mainstream discourses. The plea for independent critical reading and thinking is closely related to the study's claim that the continuing debate about the nature of Samuel Clemens's legacy can only be redirected fruitfully once we readjust the biased discursive frame within which his writings have been discussed. In Twain studies, but also in literary studies at large, many of the new findings about the complexities inherent in oral discourse habe not yet been integrated fully into critical theory. It is time that we give orality the alert ears and eyes it deserves.