Revolutions and Final Solutions: On Enlightenment and its Dialectic in Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

In Twain’s novel, force and its legitimate uses and the engagement of the Arthurian past with the present—also the central concerns of other important Arthurian narratives—are elaborated in a singular way, consistent with the ‘dialectic of enlightenment’ as understood by Theodor Adorno and Max Horckheimer.