A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

Mark Twain's classic time-traveling satire, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court follows Hank Morgan, a northern factory foreman, who finds himself transported back to 6th Century England and uses his 19th century knowledge to elevate himself to the role of The Boss, second only to the King. Much of the story serves to attack institutions in which an elect group concentrates power among themselves and so debases the lower classes that they cannot conceive rising up against it. The slaves Twain portrays in Arthurian England belong less to the 6th century than to 18th and 19th century America. Twain battles superstition as well, writing, "Somehow, every time the magic of fol-de-rol tried conclusions with the magic of science, the show more magic of fol-de-rol got left" (p. 287). Additionally, Twain's criticisms of the Catholic Church, and institutionalized religion in general, reflect his public comments on the religion and serve to foreshadow the story's grim ending.
Twain clearly loves Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur as he quotes freely from the text, even allowing characters like Sandy to relate tales of knight's exploits in lengthy passages from Malory. Therefore, reading Malory immediately before starting Yankee in King Arthur's Court helps one to better enjoy Twain's references and humor.
This edition from Reader's Digest features gorgeous illustrations by Joseph Ciardiello that capture the absurdity of Twain's story with lavish color and action. The afterword by T.E.D. Klein contextualizes Twain's writing while setting it within the Arthurian canon. The leather binding ensures that this will look wonderful on any bookshelf. show less

"You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus."

‘A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court’ begins when Hank Morgan, a skilled mechanic in a nineteenth-century New England arms factory, is struck on the head during a quarrel and awakes to find himself among the knights and magicians of King Arthur’s Camelot. Seeing the power that Merlin holds over King Arthur and his court, the narrator proclaims himself to be an even greater magician, using his 19th century scientific knowledge to create supposed miracles. As his standing in court grows the Yankee embarks on an ambitious plan to modernize Camelot with 19th century with industrial inventions like electricity, schools, newspapers, currency, dynamite and show more fireworks but in the end he is unable to prevent the death of Arthur and an interdict brought against him by the Catholic Church which grows fearful of his power.

Mark Twain was undergoing a series of personal and professional crises when this novel was written in 1889. Twain wrote the book as a burlesque of Romantic notions of chivalry by certain authors of his time like Sir Walter Scott and celebrates homespun ingenuity and democratic values while questioning the ideals of capitalism and outcomes of the Industrial Revolution.

This novel is also one of the first works to feature time travel. Whilst the genre has certainly changed over the years, Twain does it well, showing both the influence of the 19th century on Arthurian times and offering at the end a reasonable explanation as to why history continued as expected.

Twain satirizes concepts of class throughout the book, as the main character — while appreciative of Arthur himself — is determined to do away with all the inherent injustices of a societal order that holds some people to be better than others. Justice, in this book, is particularly brutal.

Twain's writing is sly and sardonic, and I was charmed by the early chapters in particular. As the narrator enters the court at Camelot for the first time he has an encounter with a young boy:

"He arrived, looked me over with a smiling and impudent curiosity; said he had come for me, and informed me that he was a page.
“Go ‘long,” I said, “you ain’t more than a paragraph.”

Unfortunately whilst I admired his writing skill I felt that the book meandered at times losing both direction and impetus as Twain climbed onto his own personal hobbyhorses. Equally I feel that the nature of monarchies have changed so much since this book's publication that some of the arguments put forward have become totally irrelevant, likewise you only have to look at what is happening in certain 'democratic' countries around the world to realise that democracy isn't all that it's cracked up to be either. show less

I found A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court much darker than I was expecting. It begins with humor, but the story gradually becomes more cynical and disturbing in places. Twain clearly wanted to criticize superstition, monarchy, and inequality, but the novel also ends up criticizing blind faith in progress and technology.

What bothered me most was that Hank Morgan constantly treats the people of Camelot like children who need to be taught nineteenth-century ideas, industry, and technology in order to raise them out of their “backwardness.” I found Morgan arrogant in the way he assumes his own society is automatically superior. He rarely seems interested in understanding the culture he has entered. Instead of trying to show more understand the people and their way of life, he sets out to reshape everything according to his own standards, and unsurprisingly this leads to disastrous consequences.

I also thought the tonal shifts in the novel were strange but interesting. One moment the book feels playful and adventurous, and the next it becomes violent, bleak, and almost apocalyptic. By the end of the book, Twain seems much less optimistic about human nature and technological “progress.”

Although I didn’t always enjoy Hank Morgan as a character, I appreciated how ambitious the novel is. It feels surprisingly modern in the way it questions whether technological advancement actually makes society better. Overall, I found it uneven but thought-provoking, and much darker and more complex when compared to other works from Mark Twain. show less

There is so much to unpack in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. When one thinks of Samuel Clemens, aka Mark Twain, science fiction doesn't readily come to mind. Sarcastic? Humorous? Yes. But certainly not science fiction in my book. The plot is simple. Nineteenth century mechanic Hank Morgan gets a conk on the head that sends him back to the 6th century. At first he thinks it is all a joke ("Get back to your circus," he tells a knight in full armor riding an armored horse). Once convinced he has truly traveled back in time he realizes he can use his knowledge of the "future," like an upcoming solar eclipse and the invention of electricity, to his advantage.
Woven throughout the plot is Twain's celebration of democracy while show more at the same time condemning humankind through observations about social and human inequalities. He attacks British nobility and rails against poverty and slavery.
How it all ends? The divine right of the King is the be settled in another book. Good news for Twain fans. That kind of ending is like your favorite musician hinting that they are working on a new album. Stay tuned. There is more to come. show less

I read an abridged version of this book as a kid and loved it. Re-read it many times. It contained mostly the action parts, so it was a lot of fun. Read it as an adult (listened to Nick Offerman's reading of it, actually) and found it was so much more. Both a fun story and a compelling statement about Twain's political views. Anti-slavery was the key takeaway, but anti-church, anti-nobility, and pro-democracy were other aspects. It could get a little long winded at times, but Offerman's reading never let me get bored. And quickly enough Twain would swing back into action and propose another showy example of 19th century innovation in 6th century backwaters to make our hero, Hank, shine like a star never to be eclipsed. I'd forgotten how show more sudden and (in a sense) sad the ending was, but I had no other expectations since it started with Hank back in the 19th century so therefore that's how it must end. All in all, I love this book now as an adult just as much as I loved it as a kid. show less

Another Multi-Layered Satire of Americanism

Hank Morgan, a 19th-century arms engineer, is struck on the head during an argument at work and wakes up in England in the 6th century, where he soon makes a name for himself as a magician more powerful than Merlin. Although not a sequel, the novel picks up almost directly from where Mark Twain left off in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884). Although Twain continues to renounce Old World romantic chivalry and heroism by way of hereditary nobility and superstitious tradition in favor of American rugged self-reliance and ingenuity, he criticizes Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution-era philosophies, particularly capitalism. In the end, Hank creates a society just as capable of violence, show more even mass slaughter, and blind obedience, to brand if not religion or title, as the one he rejects. One more wry classic in Twain's oeuvre. show less

Mark Twain's classic tale of a 19th-century go-getter who gets hit on the head, wakes up in the kingdom of Camelot, and proceeds to gleefully set about introducing his own era's technology and ideas about civilization to the Dark Ages (soon to be briefly lit by electricity).

This isn't the first time I'd read this novel, but my last encounter was nearly a quarter-century ago, and apparently I hadn't remembered it nearly as well as I'd thought. I'd recalled it, somewhat fondly, as a comic romp, a humorous satire of both Arthurian romance and the social attitudes of the Gilded Age, as well as the predecessor of a zillion less interesting science fiction stories in which improbably ingenious time travelers manage to rebuild their own show more technologically advanced civilizations centuries early, from scratch.

Well, it is all of those things. But what I'd completely forgotten is that it's also a scathing diatribe against monarchy, slavery, state-established religion, and the oppression of the poor, complete with lots of disturbing and depressing scenes calculated to bring the importance of these subjects home. Twain being Twain, it's very well done, but it does perhaps get to be a bit much. It certainly wasn't an ideal thing to read at a time when I was busy and easily distracted.

Rating: Despite it not being quite the right book at the right time for me, I figure it still probably deserves 4/5. Because, come on, Twain. show less