ABSTRACT
Anticipating Toni Morrison's call in Playing in the Dark for a rereading of texts by white authors to account for the presence of blackness in American literature. By implying that it would be impossible to view European culture through any eyes but his own, Twain asserts his independence as a spectator and stakes out a claim for his individualism as an American in Europe. Sacrilege though it may be, in his letters to the Alta California during his travels abroad and in the book he shapes out of those letters after his return to the States Twain repeatedly sets out to disturb the glamour of Venice. Twain, attempts to validate his own position as an American innocent abroad by establishing his ability "to see" more clearly than others, privileging both a commonsense epistemology and his own spectatorial innocence. Significantly, the superiority of Anglo-Saxon civilization is not signaled by artistic bounty, but by the restoration of racial hierarchy.
