The Love of Justice and Pudd’nhead Wilson: Mark Twain’s Democratic Appropriation of Dante

This paper explores Mark Twain’s engagement with political philosophy and does so by tending to the political dimensions of one of Twain’s shorter and under-appreciated books, Pudd’nhead Wilson. Twain indicates the literary and political significance of this novel by presenting this work as an appropriation of Dante’s treatment of the soul’s concern for justice in his Divine Comedy and De Monarchia. Twain presents this novel’s hero, David “Pudd’nhead” Wilson, as the best possible response to the Dantean concern for natural right in a world characterized by belief in natural science and a love of democracy. Wilson’s use of natural science to assist the cause of political justice is guided by the moral and political wisdom embedded in his ironic poetry. In other words, the wisdom to compose and understand Wilson’s poetry, and what that poetry shows us about human virtue in political life, proves legitimate title both to rule others and to use natural science on their behalf. That Wilson’s career can be said to illuminate that of his author is reinforced by a concluding reflection on Twain’s Is Shakespeare Dead?, a work that presents his own literature as a “pudd’nheaded” blend of Shakespearean poetry and Baconian science.