My professor brought up that Mark Twain would make fun of that cultural trend occasionally. Twain probably thought the same, that racists were using a cartoon version of Europe as an aesthetic. Like the steamboat that crashes is the Walter Scott, a prominent medieval romance author who Twain really hated. The entirety of Twain's book "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" is a guy from 1889 ends up in feudal England and basically clowns on the concept of monarchy and chivalry so hard he makes England into a republic. Then the Catholic church tries to kill him.
Honestly typing that out I forgot just how cool Mark Twain actually was. American mythology has tried to smooth over how vocally anti-racist he was too. He even called himself an anti-imperialist one time
after all, the KKK larped as knights
My professor brought up that Mark Twain would make fun of that cultural trend occasionally. Twain probably thought the same, that racists were using a cartoon version of Europe as an aesthetic. Like the steamboat that crashes is the Walter Scott, a prominent medieval romance author who Twain really hated. The entirety of Twain's book "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" is a guy from 1889 ends up in feudal England and basically clowns on the concept of monarchy and chivalry so hard he makes England into a republic. Then the Catholic church tries to kill him.
Honestly typing that out I forgot just how cool Mark Twain actually was. American mythology has tried to smooth over how vocally anti-racist he was too. He even called himself an anti-imperialist one time
holy shit, he ruled. I forgot this quote was him.