Mark Twain’s Close Reading Skills Versus Christian Science and Colonial Empire

Abstract This article attempts to reclaim Mark Twain’s literary practice of finding political value in obsessively reading the bylaws. The author argues that Christian Science and King Leopold’s Soliloquy serve as educational exercises in teaching us how we might apply those literary studies skills; these books meta-critically argue that when we do read the bylaws, we can be social critics too. Specifically, Twain describes the way corporations—from the Christian Science church to electric company monopolies to the Belgian monarchy—accumulate power via knowledge systems to the detriment of their publics. Though Twain himself dropped his Congo advocacy based on a sense of disillusionment and pessimism, his close reading tactics eventually produced some, albeit moderate, anti-imperialist change in American foreign policy.