A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's court

English language

Published Dec. 29, 2001

ISBN:: 978-0-486-41591-8

(1 review)

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court is an 1889 novel by American humorist and writer Mark Twain. The book was originally titled A Yankee in King Arthur's Court. Some early editions are titled A Yankee at the Court of King Arthur. In the book, a Yankee engineer from Connecticut named Hank Morgan receives a severe blow to the head and is somehow transported in time and space to England during the reign of King Arthur. After some initial confusion and his capture by one of Arthur's knights, Hank realizes that he is actually in the past, and he uses his knowledge to make people believe that he is a powerful magician. He becomes a rival of Merlin, who appears to be little more than a fraud, and gains the trust of King Arthur. Hank attempts to modernize the past in order to make people's lives better. Hank is disgusted …

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court is an 1889 novel by American humorist and writer Mark Twain. The book was originally titled A Yankee in King Arthur's Court. Some early editions are titled A Yankee at the Court of King Arthur. In the book, a Yankee engineer from Connecticut named Hank Morgan receives a severe blow to the head and is somehow transported in time and space to England during the reign of King Arthur. After some initial confusion and his capture by one of Arthur's knights, Hank realizes that he is actually in the past, and he uses his knowledge to make people believe that he is a powerful magician. He becomes a rival of Merlin, who appears to be little more than a fraud, and gains the trust of King Arthur. Hank attempts to modernize the past in order to make people's lives better. Hank is disgusted by how the Barons treat the commoners, and tries to implement democratic reforms, but in the end he is unable to prevent the death of Arthur. Hank declares England a republic, but the Catholic Church - growing fearful of his power - issues an interdict against him. Twain wrote the book as a burlesque of Romantic notions of chivalry after being inspired by a dream in which he was a knight himself, severely inconvenienced by the weight and cumbersome nature of his armor. It is a satire of feudalism and monarchy that also celebrates homespun ingenuity and democratic values while questioning the for-profit ideals of capitalism and outcomes of the Industrial Revolution. At one point in the book, Twain even defends the French Revolution. It is among several works by Twain and his contemporaries that mark the transition from the Gilded Age to the Progressive Era of socioeconomic discourse. It is often cited as a formative example of the fledgling time travel genre.

5 editions

Thom reviewed A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's court by Mark Twain

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2 stars

In this erstwhile satire, Twain rails against the monarchy, the church, and bureaucracy - the last mostly by drowning the reader in it. To show the pointlessness of battling knights, he fills pages with tedious descriptions of these battles. The brutal ending was all too prescient of world war I, still 25 years in the future.

There is wit here, but it is sparse and usually directed against the church or the monarchy. Many passages of plot are drawn directly from Sir Thomas Malory, and the whole section on hermits from another author. The rest of the story about the dried up holy well is quite good; I wonder if it was published earlier.

This book has been adapted to stage and screen many times, though I'm afraid the only one I've seen is Chuck Jones' "A Connecticut Rabbit...". Coincidentally, I've just started Carl Sagan's Contact, and the protagonist is …

In this erstwhile satire, Twain rails against the monarchy, the church, and bureaucracy - the last mostly by drowning the reader in it. To show the pointlessness of battling knights, he fills pages with tedious descriptions of these battles. The brutal ending was all too prescient of world war I, still 25 years in the future.

There is wit here, but it is sparse and usually directed against the church or the monarchy. Many passages of plot are drawn directly from Sir Thomas Malory, and the whole section on hermits from another author. The rest of the story about the dried up holy well is quite good; I wonder if it was published earlier.

This book has been adapted to stage and screen many times, though I'm afraid the only one I've seen is Chuck Jones' "A Connecticut Rabbit...". Coincidentally, I've just started Carl Sagan's Contact, and the protagonist is seen reading this book. I hope she got more out of it than me. If this is exemplary of Twain's later writings, I'll stick with jumping frog stories.