A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

May 14, 2013 Paquita Maria Sanchez rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: literature

Man, there is so much potential criticism of modern times in this book, but I would be remiss to dissect it within the framework of my own reality given that I am not an historian, not Mark Twain, this book is not specifically relevant to or directly critical of my world so much as a persistent shadow upon it, and it is straight-up just not 1889 or 5 to 15-something right now. Oh, and thank the old gods and the new for that shit. I've known a lot of re-enactors and Fantasy/Medieval literature bu...more Man, there is so much potential criticism of modern times in this book, but I would be remiss to dissect it within the framework of my own reality given that I am not an historian, not Mark Twain, this book is not specifically relevant to or directly critical of my world so much as a persistent shadow upon it, and it is straight-up just not 1889 or 5 to 15-something right now. Oh, and thank the old gods and the new for that shit. I've known a lot of re-enactors and Fantasy/Medieval literature buffs in my day, being largely from a small-ish Oklahoma town with a percentage of jugglers, fire-dancers, chainmail-makers, tarot-readers, and general Carnie-types that would surprise the pants off someone from outside the community, especially considering I'm referring to a city that is smack in the middle of The Bible Belt. Getting to the point, fun as a circus can be to watch, Medieval Times sound like they sucked for pretty much everyone involved. I hope that no one would actually, intentionally go all Ash into history if given a time machine. Fuuuuuck that.

I know it's easy to romanticize faraway times, especially when they have been completely fabricated to begin with. Arthur! My cell phone pisses me off as much as the next guy, bills and forms and the like get me down too, etc. Expired tags, time-clocks, health insurance premiums, shit like that. The notion of a place with simpler customs and an off-the-land lifestyle, sure it sounds fucking sweet in theory. However, Twain reality-checks with a bitch-slap here. Rather than fair maidens with diamond-encrusted fancy ringlet hairdos which take half a day to fashion, and gallant knights with silky golden locks and shining armor who would fight to the death for their loved ones, it's more like, you know, smallpox and swamp-ass. Technology, medicine, intellectual and cultural evolutions, showers: not things to be taken for granted. Between this novel and a couple of episodes of Game of Thrones, if you still try and tell me that you would rather live in Medieval Times, I'll be forced to armchair diagnose you as batshit and/or masochistic. And anyway, get off the internet! That's witchcraft right there, and so you are running a serious risk of getting burned to death on a pyre with your first-born speared to your chest. Awwww, isn't that so romantic? Bad as things can be nowadays, history is pretty embarrassing in comparison. (less)

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Dec 07, 2012 Megan rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: iah-207, school

This is a paper I wrote for a class on this novel.

As John Dalberg-Acton, an English historian, politician, and writer, once said “Absolute power corrupts absolutely.” This theme is illustrated by the character of Hank Morgan in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain. Hank believes that he is the saving grace for the people of Camelot using capitalism as his means to set them free. However, can someone force freedom and a new ideology onto people, and was Hank really just tryi...more This is a paper I wrote for a class on this novel.

As John Dalberg-Acton, an English historian, politician, and writer, once said “Absolute power corrupts absolutely.” This theme is illustrated by the character of Hank Morgan in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain. Hank believes that he is the saving grace for the people of Camelot using capitalism as his means to set them free. However, can someone force freedom and a new ideology onto people, and was Hank really just trying to better himself and enhance his power? Following the idea that absolute power corrupts absolutely, Twain shows through his satirical wit that a bloodless revolution is not possible through any change in ideology, especially when the change is to capitalism, which is seen as just another form of corruption and slavery.

On his arrival to Camelot, Hank refers to the people as animals, such as calling them sheep or rabbits. “They were the quaintest and simplest and trustingest race; why, they were nothing but rabbits” (78). In this way he refers to them as weak minded, only capable of reproducing and becoming a bigger mass of uneducated people that, like sheep, need a leader. Hank is the leader he thinks they need. His ultimate goal is to lead the people in a bloodless revolution, which he intends to orchestrate through a capitalist society. After he gains the title of Sir Boss, his first official acts were starting a patent office and then factories. These factories included the Man factories, “a Factory where I’m going to turn groping and grubbing automata into men” (173)*. On the outside these could be seen as a form of people’s empowerment where Hank is educating the masses, turning them into men and leading them towards the light of the 19th century. However, the reality is just Hank showing off his power and knowledge, believing that he is much smarter than the people of Camelot and therefore can rule them easily. Even though Hank does have good intentions of leading the people through a revolution and educating them, it has always been said “absolute power corrupts absolutely.” What these factories are really achieving is giving Hank more power. The factories are used to create technology that only Hank knows how to use and what they are used for. Capitalizing on their superstitions, Hank uses these technologies to sway people to follow him. Using dynamite and fireworks, he undermines Merlin and gains power by proving, through the technology, that he is a greater magician. He also builds a gun and kills countless knights to further prove that he is stronger and more powerful.

“When you are going to do a miracle for an ignorant race, you want to get in every detail that will count; you want to make all the properties impressive to the public eye; you want to make matters comfortable for your head guest; then you can turn yourself loose and play your effects for all they are worth. I know the value of these things, for I know human nature” (235).

Hank can easily be seen at these moments as a con man bluffing and using his wits to make a profit and gain followers. He uses their weaknesses to give himself more strength. Even in the end of the novel, Hank writes a proclamation claiming that he and the people of Camelot are now a government of and for the people, but then signs it from The Boss. His signing it The Boss instead of The People shows that he still believes that he is above the people and that they need to be ruled. They may have a better form of government but they still need someone like Hank to make all the important decisions for them. Even though in Hank’s mind he now sees the people as men, in his actions he still sees them as sheep.

Hank uses the concept of capitalism in Camelot as a way to better himself by tricking the people into thinking that he is helping them. When asked what capitalism is, people most likely answer that it is a free market involved in free trade outside of government regulations. Capitalism is in fact is a monopolized ownership of the means of production and is a system of wage labor. Capitalism is just a sweet illusion of freedom when in fact it is just a clever form of enslavement. Using capitalism Hank changes the structure of those in power. He takes the knights and turns them into walking billboards for things such as soap, which in a means degrades their power and just makes them a cog in the capitalist’s machine. “Brother! -- to dirt like this?” (295). History is cyclical in nature. There is always someone in power and always someone who is oppressed; it is just that the means of oppression get sneakier using hope and the potential for growth in power as their allies. First in history there was the king and his serfs, then the slave master and his slaves, and now we see the capitalist and his worker.

“The most of King Arthur’s British nation were slaves, pure and simple, and bore that name… and the rest were slaves in fact, but without the name; they imagined themselves men and freemen, and called themselves so” (79).

Hank sees all the people in Camelot as slaves even though they don’t realize it. Just his title, Hank is The Boss, shows that he controls the workers, what they make, what they are taught, and their profit. He holds all the power in this capitalist situation. Even though Hank feels like he is doing the people of Camelot a favor, he is just performing a more secretive form of slavery. He is ultimately trying to force this new ideology of capitalism upon the masses trying to convince them of his bloodless revolution and with his scenes and lies they follow him.

Hank’s bloodless revolution is eventually found to be impossible, showing again how history is cyclical. No revolution is victorious without bloodshed. The violence of capitalism, such as getting hit over the head in the workplace, is what initially what brought Hank to Camelot and it is also what destroys Camelot. “I was turning on my light one-candle power at a time, and meant to continue to do so” (99). Hank, throughout all of his schemes, was planning to turn on the lights to people in Camelot, making them brighter and showing them the light which only technology of the 19th century can bring. But it turns out differently than what he planned, “So I touched a button and set fifty electric sums aflame on the top of the precipice… We were enclosed in tree walls of dead men” (460). Everything Hank has worked for all his factories and technology are in the end used as weapons of mass destruction killing hundreds of knights. Hank blows up all his factories and finally flicks on the switch, turning on the lights, and in that moment with the lights blazing, fries the enemy knights on the electric fence. As Hank looks around at his forces at the end of the battle, he sees only 54 of them left. Hank was unable to change many people’s ideologies through his schemes and technology and his idea of capitalism is a failure. In the end it is Merlin, the very person whose power Hank stole, who sends Hank back to his time. This represents that the original ideology of Camelot is what wins the revolution and is allowed to start over after the slate is wiped clean with the destruction of Camelot. Hank’s capitalist ideas and oppression by labor didn’t work and maybe, ultimately, it can’t work.

Hank tried to change the ideology of the nation of Camelot into one similar to where he came from; he used the idea of capitalism. His plan was to use these ideas to create a brighter society turning them from sheep to men and leading them in a bloodless revolution. What Hank seemed to forget was the fact that he was actually just leading the people into a more subtle form of slavery and one that is more corrupt and violent than what they had before. In the end it is found that a bloodless revolution through a change in ideology is not altogether possible, especially when the leader of the revolution wants more power than what is already given to him. With capitalism already considered a corrupt ideology and the idea that absolute power corrupts absolutely, it is easy to see why Hank’s plans don’t pan out in the end. People cannot be forced into changing what they believe no matter how enslaved they are seen from people on the outside.

Update: received a 3.9 on this paper :)
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Nov 23, 2008 Kara rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: victorian-late-fiction, king-arthur, time-travel

Most people think they know this story - but they don't - they just know the fish-out-of-water story that is just the surface of this book; this is really a story of about the biggest problems Mark Twain observed in his time period, including slavery, abuses of political power, unchecked factory growth, child labor, and frightening new war technology. The final battle scene eerily predicts World War One. While the book has many funny moments, it's really a somber, reflective, sad story.

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Aug 03, 2007 Sarah rated it 4 of 5 stars

A book about going to a backwards place, dominated by an ignorant faith and blowing a lot of stuff up in the name of freedom. If you can be non-cynical enough, you might be able to find sympathy for our American freedom-fighters in Iraq by reading of Hank's well-meaning attempt at a socio-political overhaul. I won't tell you how it ends, but your world won't be too rocked. This book is really amazing to read from our contemporary perspective. Here's a cusp-industrial mind writing on the dark age...more

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Mar 31, 2009 Franklin Peach rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: own

I Read A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain to my kids (7-9). Having never read this classic before I expected it to be a little bit more 'kid oriented' than it was. There were many times when my 7 and 9 year-olds struggled to make it through the book.

Yankee had so many facets to it that it is hard to pin down. At times it is laugh out loud funny, or highly ironic and other times the humor is quite dark. At still other times it is down right preachy, especially against Medie...more I Read A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain to my kids (7-9). Having never read this classic before I expected it to be a little bit more 'kid oriented' than it was. There were many times when my 7 and 9 year-olds struggled to make it through the book.

Yankee had so many facets to it that it is hard to pin down. At times it is laugh out loud funny, or highly ironic and other times the humor is quite dark. At still other times it is down right preachy, especially against Medieval Monarchy and the Catholic church. (be sure to be aware of this, I had to overcome some of Twain's biases against the Catholic Church) Sometimes it goes into great detail about topics that 7 and 9 year olds really would not care less about, There was a whole chapter of our Hero explaining about inflation and the value of money. Several times I had to get out the dictionary myself because I could not explain what the author was saying to my children without it.

Kids will surprise you though. My 7 year-old, had about had it with Yankee, and although I wanted to push through the book, I am convinced that reading needs to be something they want to do. So I asked her if she wanted to finish the book, or to move on to our next one. I expected her to say "Let's read a different book, dad" and I was fully prepared to do it. However, she instead declared her intent to stick it out and we sat down to read the next chapter which was very engrossing and humorous to her and her brother, I knew we would be able to finish it after that.

I am very glad we did finish it and I know my kids are too. We really enjoyed watching 'The Boss' (i.e. The Yankee) and King Author roam about the country incognito and how the King reacts to being sold into slavery, and their amazing and improbable rescue. The ending has absolutely stunning climax pitting 6th century England against the marvels of the The Boss' nineteenth century inventions. that I would have never guessed and my son loved it.

As we read the book, it was interesting to see how easy a time The Boss had in the 6th Century and I made it a point several times to ask the children why they thought that was. The answer comes dripping out of the pages: the Boss can THINK, no one else there can. This type of sentiment about the people of 6th century England was a constant theme, like this quote in which The Boss refers to the Knights of the Round Table:

There did not seem to be brains enough in the entire nursery, so to speak, to bait a fish-hook with; but you didn't seem to mind that, after a little, because you soon saw that brains were not needed in a society like that, and indeed would have marred it, hindered it, spoiled its symmetry -- perhaps rendered its existence impossible.

I would highly recommend this book for those 9 and up (although you might be safer at 11) who are studying history, government or sociology or just want a good read. There is a wealth of commentary in Yankee on each subject and it would be a fun way to explore ideas about each and about human nature itself.(less)

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Feb 06, 2008 Casey rated it 4 of 5 stars

I head seen and heard little tidbits about 'Connecticut Yankee...' over the past several years. It is one of Twain's most well known novels, after Tom Sawyer/Huck Finn, but I've mostly caught references to the story in parodies featuring Bugs Bunny or Martin Lawrence. That is to say that the time travel to the Middle Ages gag has been overutilized of late. However, the book is a commentary on the ways of modern life, as much as it is a damning critique of powerlessness of 6th Century peasants.

I...more I head seen and heard little tidbits about 'Connecticut Yankee...' over the past several years. It is one of Twain's most well known novels, after Tom Sawyer/Huck Finn, but I've mostly caught references to the story in parodies featuring Bugs Bunny or Martin Lawrence. That is to say that the time travel to the Middle Ages gag has been overutilized of late. However, the book is a commentary on the ways of modern life, as much as it is a damning critique of powerlessness of 6th Century peasants.

I won't spoil the sumptuous morsels in the book, but the protagonist Hank Morgan finds himself in the time of King Arthur Pendragon. After being hustled into prison for insulting the honor of a member of the Knight-Errantry, Hank cleverly saves himself from his own execution by using a combination of clever science and good timing. Because of the perception of his powers, he gets himself established as King Arthur's closest minister and magician, displacing the scheming, foul-tempered Merlin. Instead of taking the name of Dukeship, he settles for the title of 'The Boss.'

Far from wanting to apply the fear and power that his station allows him, he sets about modernizing the 6th Century, with all the wonders of the 19th Century, in an attempt to liberate the abused and dispossessed peasant masses. His inventions range from the hysterical and quirky, to clever and impressive. Electricity, firearms, locomotives, and advertising all come about through Morgan's hand.

But, as the book progresses, and he tries to teach King Arthur to amend the intransigence of his noble breeding to empathize with the plight of the poor English peasants, he directly challenges the authority of the Knight-Errantry, and stirs up a disastrous conflict with a desperate enemy.

In many ways, the novel works to dispel the notion that technology and education (and all the good things that come along with both of those) can reverse the damage of Centuries of indoctrination and institutional rule. Twain is at his most fatalistic here when he builds our hopes and expectations to believe that through determination and good will, one man can really confront and defeat the injustice of a nation, only to dash them. He seems clear (and the introduciton to my volumes hits on this) that Mark Twain is making a cogent point about the trappings of the Industrial Age of the 19th Century, and predicting the rise and fall of the Labor Class in America.

Twain's brilliance comes through in the excitement and wonderment he builds when presenting the view of the "modern man" in a position to reshape our dismal and banal shared past. Even after 100 years, the novel retains relevance and Twain's laugh-out-loud wit, leaving me wondering what I hadn't read this book before.(less)

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Apr 15, 2012 Erik Graff rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: everyone

Recommended to Erik by: no one

Shelves: literature

One of the many good things about lying in order to avoid junior high school is that it allows time to read good books. Having done the old "thermometer to the light bulb" trick, I spent a very productive couple of days home in bed reading, among other things, Mark Twain's Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.

My parents weren't entirely stupid. My frequent illnesses had to be demonstrated by coughing, dripping, abnormal temperature and the like. Since they were still suspicious, it was a ru...more

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Apr 13, 2012 Stela rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: reviews

I have to say I browsed the final chapters - even if I understand the message, the book seemed to me longish and somehow boring, too long for a parody, anyway, and too many themes not so developed at all - politics, society, even linguistics and I didn't like the choice of the historical period, why King Arthur, anyway? Maybe because his figure is half historical half mythological and therefore you can put him in (almost) any historical context you want, but he is also a symbol and I wish he rem...more

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Jan 24, 2008 Julie rated it 3 of 5 stars

I was too young when I read this...5th grade. Did not get the nuances as much as I might have if I read it later. I was forced to read this and it still makes me cringe when I hear the title.

Get over it, right? Someday maybe.

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Aug 04, 2012 Jennifer (aka EM) rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Ok, so Mark Twain. This is the only one I've read, once way back when and just now. MT/SLC - he's not really part of the curriculum or general literary zeitgeist in Canada. So I don't really know much about him or about that Huckleberry boy and the other one, Tom. I'm likely talking out of my hat when I say, if you liked them you've just got to like this one. Although maybe this is more directly scathing and satirical?

Connecticut Yankee is an eviscerating take-down of the entire British social...more Ok, so Mark Twain. This is the only one I've read, once way back when and just now. MT/SLC - he's not really part of the curriculum or general literary zeitgeist in Canada. So I don't really know much about him or about that Huckleberry boy and the other one, Tom. I'm likely talking out of my hat when I say, if you liked them you've just got to like this one. Although maybe this is more directly scathing and satirical?

Connecticut Yankee is an eviscerating take-down of the entire British social structure, y'know, the one that the U.S. revolted (or as Twain would say "revoluted") against. On top of that, it's a castigation of the RC Church and its role in the oppressions of, at the time he was writing, the past 1800+ years. And most of all, it's an abolitionist tale. Call 'em serfs, call 'em slaves (as Twain does), same difference. This is a plea for egalitarianism and humanism.

At the same time, "The Boss" - as the prototypical late-19th century entrepreneur and manufacturing baron -- is flawed and gently mocked for his belief that capitalism and technology will win the day. I don't know how much mockery would have been recognized at the time of publication, but from 100+ years later, we can clearly see the hand of a clear-eyed and prescient satirist at work in the immense and disproportional carnage wreaked by the improved technology of warfare, the raping and pillaging of natural resources and resulting destruction of the environment of the Industrial Age, the rabid commercialism that leads to the trading of one type of slavery for another.

Twain does not give two hoots for historical accuracy here, nor for any of the conventions by which literary time travel is supposed to "work." He doesn't care if this makes any logical sense, and to make sure we understand that, he picks, first of all, the already fictional 6th-Century King Arthur and his Knights as the time to travel back to. He then thinks nothing of weaving in references to King Henry VIII and the Tower of London and a bunch of other anachronistic details that defy the historical record and the laws of physics. That is part of the delight of this book - it's a romp.

His brush is so broad he takes the piss of everyone and everything on that little island of Britain from about 500 to 1850 A.D.

This perhaps goes without saying, because no satire is fully effective without it, but his righteous anger is not just expressed through ridiculousness and absurdity -- there are scenes here that are heartbreaking and tragic, and Twain skilfully reins in his pen to paint these with the pathos (albeit romanticized and sentimentalized) they require to keep our eyes focused on the fact that there are real people who suffer at the hands of others and institutions who enslave them.

Powerful reading (and a bit of a brain-twist, coming right after Wolf Hall, which I'm off to review in just a moment.
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Sep 24, 2011 Natalie rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Hank, a Yankee from Early America, has found himself in the sixth century. He's now a pupil of King Arthur, a member for Britain, and he's challenged that time periods most magical and dangerous man--Merlin. However, with his superior knowledge and the sciences from his world he is easily able to out stage and out smart not only Merlin, and all other challengers, but the Kingdom itself. He starts small, wanting to add soap and bathing into the equation for cleaner and more sanitary persons. He...more

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Nov 16, 2008 Ken Elser rated it 3 of 5 stars

Although a bit of a mish-mash of ideas and stories and not particularly coherent in its structure, A Connecticut Yankee is surely an intriguing social commentary about the limits of progress and a strong condemnation of human nature. Twain uses his fantastical tale of a 19th century New Englander become right-hand man to King Arthur in the 6th century to illustrate his cynacism at the idea of true human progress and civilization, showing it to be ultimately self-defeating and as cruel as the mid...more

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Sep 20, 2008 J rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: novels

Having read and enjoyed several of Jack London’s books, it dawned on me to try out some Mark Twain. It was with a certain amount of excitement that I approached A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur’s Court but, ultimately, found myself disappointed.

The concept of the book, that a resident of 1860’s America suddenly finds himself transported to sixth century England in the court of King Arthur, is pretty good. However, this book is just so long. The writing is not as sharp as in other Twain works....more

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Sep 29, 2012 Kin rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: american

I very much dislike this 'I'm so proud to be American, our country is the best in the world" attitude cliched beyond possibility in Hollywood movies, and was very sorry to see this book adopt the same stance. I am aware that THEN it was justified pride with USA gaining independence etc. but I still find it BOOORING and TEDIOUS. And the first 1/4 of the book is so full of gloryfing America that reading it made me quite sick, especially since that part is quite unTwainy: not hilarious at all and n...more

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Mar 25, 2013 Jeremy rated it 4 of 5 stars

Can I just quote someone else's review who I completely agreed with!? :-)

"Most people think they know this story - but they don't - they just know the fish-out-of-water story that is just the surface of this book; this is really a story of about the biggest problems Mark Twain observed in his time period, including slavery, abuses of political power, unchecked factory growth, child labor, and frightening new war technology. The final battle scene eerily predicts World War One. While the book has...more Can I just quote someone else's review who I completely agreed with!? :-)

"Most people think they know this story - but they don't - they just know the fish-out-of-water story that is just the surface of this book; this is really a story of about the biggest problems Mark Twain observed in his time period, including slavery, abuses of political power, unchecked factory growth, child labor, and frightening new war technology. The final battle scene eerily predicts World War One. While the book has many funny moments, it's really a somber, reflective, sad story." Kara's review

I liked this book a lot, and the more I think back on it the more I like it. Here are some favorite quotes:

“We speak of nature; it is folly; there is no such thing as nature; what we call by that misleading name is merely heredity and training. We have no thoughts of our own, no opinions of our own; they are transmitted to us, trained into us.”

“Unlimited power is the ideal thing when it is in safe hands. The despotism of heaven is the one absolutely perfect government, and earthly despotism would be the absolute perfect earthly government if the conditions were the same; namely the despot the perfectest individual of the human race, and his lease of life perpetual; but as a perishable, perfect man must die and leave his despotism in the hands of an imperfect successor, an earthly despotism is not merely a bad form of government, it is the worst form that is possible.”

“His head was an hour-glass; it could stow an idea, but it had to do it a grain at a time, not the whole idea at once.”

“Intellectual 'work' is misnamed; it is a pleasure, a dissipation, and is its own highest reward. The poorest paid architect, engineer, general, author, sculptor, painter, lecturer, advocate, legislator, actor, preacher, singer, is constructively in heaven when he is at work; and as for the magician with the fiddle-bow in his hand, who sits in the midst of a great orchestra with the ebbing and flowing tides of divine sound washing over him - why, certainly he is at work, if you wish to call it that, but lord, it's a sarcasm just the same. The law of work does seem utterly unfair - but there it is, and nothing can change it: the higher the pay in enjoyment the worker gets out of it, the higher shall be his pay in cash also.”
― Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
tags: work 11 people liked it

“How empty is theory in the presence of fact!”

“My kind of loyalty was loyalty to one's country, not to its institutions or its officeholders. The country is the real thing, the substantial thing, the eternal thing; it is the thing to watch over, and care for, and be loyal to; institutions are extraneous, they are its mere clothing, and clothing can wear out, become ragged, cease to be comfortable, cease to protect the body from winter, disease, and death.”

“Words are only painted fire, a look is the fire itself. She gave that look, and carried it away to the treasury of heaven, where all things that are divine belong.”
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Mar 12, 2013 Eden Mabee rated it 3 of 5 stars

It's hard to say much about a classic--that's what Connecticut Yankee is. Most people have heard the base story--some have even see video creations of the book. I have too.

The book itself is something special, however. There are nuances in the reading, and especially in the images of the version I read (via the Gutenberg Project: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/86/86-... ) that no other version I'd seen passed along. And since Mark Twain's works are noted for their slightly sardonic analysis of...more

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Jan 08, 2013 Dave marked it as to-read · review of another edition

Shelves: calibre, fiction

SUMMARY: A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, by Mark Twain, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics: New introductions commissioned from today's top writers and scholars Biographies of the authors Chronologies of contemporary histori...more SUMMARY: A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, by Mark Twain, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics: New introductions commissioned from today's top writers and scholars Biographies of the authors Chronologies of contemporary historical, biographical, and cultural events Footnotes and endnotes Selective discussions of imitations, parodies, poems, books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, and films inspired by the work Comments by other famous authors Study questions to challenge the reader's viewpoints and expectations Bibliographies for further reading Indices & Glossaries, when appropriateAll editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works. One of the greatest satires in American literature, Mark Twain’s 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 awakens to find himself among the knights and magicians of King Arthur’s Camelot.What follows is a culture clash of the first magnitude, as practical-minded Hank, disgusted with the ignorance and superstition of the people, decides to enlighten them with education and technology. Through a series of wonderfully imaginative adventures, Twain celebrates American homespun ingenuity and democracy as compared to the backward ineptitude of a chivalric monarchy. At the same time, however, Twain raises the question of whether material progress necessarily creates a better society. As Hank becomes more powerful and self-righteous, he also becomes more ruthless, more autocratic, and less able to control events, until the only way out is a massively destructive war.While the dark pessimism that would fully blossom in Twain’s later works can be discerned in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, the novel will nevertheless be remembered primarily for its wild leaps of imagination, brilliant wit, and entertaining storytelling.With over 200 of the original illustrations by Dan Beard. Stephen Railton teaches American literature at the University of Virginia. His most recent book is Mark Twain: A Short Introduction.(less)

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Nov 01, 2012 Steven Benesi rated it 5 of 5 stars

What do I think? Well, I have a malleable top ten books I've ever read list, but there are two stalwarts that will never be shaken from it; A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court is one of these. Brilliant in its satire, cutting in its humor, in my opinion this is Clemens at his finest. I've read that it wasn't received well in its time, but for the days we all live in now it is a master work. It's amazing how much can change, yet how everything stays the same. Clemens take on the era of Ki...more

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Sep 03, 2012 Robert rated it 3 of 5 stars

A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur's Court
by Mark Twain ( 4 stars )
I really liked this book . Mark twain filled this book with with so much hummer , action , satire, and social commentaries . That it is a joy to read . I recommended it highly .

The book tells the story of Hank Morgan . Who is hit over the head and transported back to the year 528 AD. when he gets to the court of King Arthur he is almost put to death . But Hank Morgan gets out of it . With Hank Morgan advance knowledge of scienc...more

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Aug 17, 2012 Andrew rated it 5 of 5 stars

Mark Twain is my favorite American author, easily. The wit and sarcasm he uses is right up my alley, and his tales are easy to digest. A Conneticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court is so good. I'd put it right up there with Huckleberry Finn, maybe even higher, since it doesn't slow down like Huck Finn.

The conceit is that a 19th-century Connecticut factory manager bumps his head and winds up in King Arthur's time. The Boss, as he comes to be called, hates monarchy and the authoritarian barbarism he...more Mark Twain is my favorite American author, easily. The wit and sarcasm he uses is right up my alley, and his tales are easy to digest. A Conneticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court is so good. I'd put it right up there with Huckleberry Finn, maybe even higher, since it doesn't slow down like Huck Finn.

The conceit is that a 19th-century Connecticut factory manager bumps his head and winds up in King Arthur's time. The Boss, as he comes to be called, hates monarchy and the authoritarian barbarism he encounters, the sheer ignorance, and the unwillingness (or inability) of the people to change their backward ways. He despises chivalry and the stupidity of this world he inhabits, so he undertakes to take over early Britain using science and the people's own superstition.

If you haven't read the book stop reading now. SPOILER ALERT!

What's so beautiful about this book is that it obviously undercuts the Arthurian customs, but if you read closely, also takes it's whacks at 19th-century capitalist imperialists. Henry constantly refers to the people as animals or Indians, and his attempts to "civilize" these people all eventually fail. He criticizes the royalty for their wanton cruelty and violence, then proceeds to slaughter the whole of the royal class. He speaks of the poor indoctrination of these people, starts his own plan of indoctrination, yet can't escape the fact that his own indoctrination fails all but a few. He criticizes the state Church, then says that in his perfect state a man can be "any kind of Christian he wants to be." Mark Twain was too cynical to have done this unintentionally, although I admit that this is a reading that is outside the context of the time during which it was written. Twain's Uber-mensch becomes as much of an animalistic, cold-blooded killer as the very people he criticizes. The social commentary here is clear to me, that the machine of modern imperialism is just as brutal, maybe moreso for its efficiency, as the ancient ways from which we claim to be so far removed. (less)

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Apr 17, 2012 Thom Swennes rated it 4 of 5 stars

Another piquant tale by a master of humor in literature, Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain, stands alone in its greatness. Twain had the knack to turn any idea into an interesting idea into a masterpiece with his personal mark on it. He was a metaphoric genius that puts a smile on the lips and a laugh in the voice of all who read him. Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court has this and much more. Twain presents a copious number of issues, ranging from economic and politi...more

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Mar 11, 2012 Wendy rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is a love-hate book as some of it was really quite badly written. However, the satirical comments of Twain's hero (The Boss) as he tried to 'civilise' the court of King Arthur are always on point. There is a lot of relevance for today's society about the worth of some of our 'improvements' and the book has an element of sci-fi in it as Twain predicts technological advances. Was The Boss in love with Clarence? We will never know as the storyline never quite gets there. The real classics are...more

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Mar 06, 2012 Jason Mills rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Seekers of good laughs

Shelves: classics, fiction, fantasy, history, humour, period

An odd book. Our nominal narrator meets a fellow who claims to have fallen through time to the court of King Arthur, and the bulk of the book is this Yankee's own memoir of his time there. Finding the knights and nobles to be largely fools, our hero works his way into power through knowledge and cunning. (Handily, for instance, he happens to have memorised the dates of all the eclipses visible from 6th-century England - like you do.) He begins quietly transforming the feudal society with a conce...more An odd book. Our nominal narrator meets a fellow who claims to have fallen through time to the court of King Arthur, and the bulk of the book is this Yankee's own memoir of his time there. Finding the knights and nobles to be largely fools, our hero works his way into power through knowledge and cunning. (Handily, for instance, he happens to have memorised the dates of all the eclipses visible from 6th-century England - like you do.) He begins quietly transforming the feudal society with a concealed industrial revolution and furtive education for any bright sparks he can root out (mostly boys, mind you). Sucked into a knightly quest, he wanders the land to meet its inhabitants, gets sold into slavery, takes on an army of knights single-handed, and confronts the might of the church.

It's very funny, let's get that clear, packed with dry wit and cheerful contempt for authority:

"Kings" and "Kingdoms" were as thick in Britain as they had been in little Palestine in Joshua's time, when people had to sleep with their knees pulled up because they couldn't stretch out without a passport.

Twain's language is also strikingly effective on occasion:

...sometimes when a bright remark was made at one end of the procession and started on its travels toward the other, you could note its progress all the way by the sparkling spray of laughter it threw off from its bows as it plowed along; and also by the blushes of the mules in its wake.

My unease with the book stems from its sensibilities. At one point a queen means to hang a bad musician. Our hero, finding this harsh, stalls by asking to hear the band again - but then agrees with her and hangs the lot of them! It's a ho-ho moment, to be sure, but it is immediately followed by his rescuing other prisoners of the Queen from torture in her dungeons, a scene in which we are invited to share in his perception of cruelty and injustice. It's a change of tone that jars with the broad humour preceding it. This swinging from Swiftian wit to Dickensian compassion goes on throughout the book: the most tender scene is that depicting a family of peasants dying from smallpox; yet towards the tale's end we are seemingly expected to sympathise with our hero as he engineers (literally) a massacre.

Twain clearly wishes to praise the acquisition and use of knowledge and reason (albeit the Yankee's achievements in just a few years are implausibly grand, and helped by the fact that this version of Merlin is a mere charlatan); but while he nods to humanity, individualism and justice throughout, he also applauds the arbitrary slaying of opponents by this supposedly benign dictator, the self-described "champion of hard unsentimental common-sense and reason". It could be that Twain's intentions are more sophisticated than I'm giving him credit for, and that the Yankee (as a type) is as much an object of satire as the sleepy, sheepish society into which he is flung; but to me it feels more like a rollicking yarn whose values are all of tumble, so that it's not clear what, if anything, is being advocated.

(This was, incidentally, my first Kindle read, and the numerous excerpts from Malory were partially unreadable due to poor formatting. Buyer beware.)(less)

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Feb 27, 2012 dragonhelmuk rated it 4 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Kindled for free, what a strange book! Parts of it are reminiscent of Don Quixote, half of the (medieval) Dream of Rhonabwy, and all very much in the spirit of At-Swim two birds. Although I don't usually like Mark Twain, I'll make an exception for this particular one. A modern engineer (expert in the making of demolition charges, and certain other modern technologies) manages to time travel his way back to Arthur's court, and becomes "The Boss" through his superior education. Quite soon he gets...more Kindled for free, what a strange book! Parts of it are reminiscent of Don Quixote, half of the (medieval) Dream of Rhonabwy, and all very much in the spirit of At-Swim two birds. Although I don't usually like Mark Twain, I'll make an exception for this particular one. A modern engineer (expert in the making of demolition charges, and certain other modern technologies) manages to time travel his way back to Arthur's court, and becomes "The Boss" through his superior education. Quite soon he gets fed up of the aristocratic, superstitious political climate, and begins to shape the civilisation more to his liking. But there are also elements to the society which he considers superior to those of modern times. Definitely a good one for medievalists to read, but possibly not medieval historians (Twain wasn't exactly an expert and enjoys his fair share of anachronisms)... Three quotes illustrate the best parts:

{fun anti-bourgeois ism)
yet they were not slaves, not chattels. By a sarcasm of law and phrase they were freemen. Seven-tenths of the free population of the country were of just their class and degree: small "independent" farmers, artisans, etc.; which is to say, they were the nation, the actual Nation; they were about all of it that was useful, or worth saving, or really respect-worthy, and to subtract them would have been to subtract the Nation and leave behind some dregs, some refuse, in the shape of a king, nobility and gentry, idle, unproductive, acquainted mainly with the arts of wasting and destroying, and of no sort of use or value in any rationally constructed
...
Words realize nothing, vivify nothing to you, unless you have suffered in your own person the thing which the words try to describe. There are wise people who talk ever so knowingly and complacently about "the working classes," and satisfy themselves that a day's hard intellectual work is very much harder than a day's hard manual toil, and is righteously entitled to much bigger pay. Why, they really think that, you know, because they know all about the one, but haven't tried the other. But I know all about both; and so far as I am concerned, there isn't money enough in the universe to hire me to swing a pickaxe thirty days, but I will do the hardest kind of intellectual work for just as near nothing as you can cipher it down—and I will be satisfied, too.

{making fun of the modern times narrator asks questions of }
"It is a good haul. Who are they? Where do they hang out?"
"Where do they hang out?"
"Yes, where do they live?"
"Ah, I understood thee not. That will I tell eftsoons." Then she said musingly, and softly, turning the words daintily over her tongue:
"Hang they out—hang they out—where hang—where do they hang out; eh, right so; where do they hang out. Of a truth the phrase hath a fair and winsome grace, and is prettily worded withal. I will repeat it anon and anon in mine idlesse, whereby I may peradventure learn it. Where do they hang out. Even so! already it falleth trippingly from my tongue, and forasmuch as—"

{Victorian heroism - the narrator persuades a peasant to speak against the aristocracy}
"Even though you be a spy, and your words a trap for my undoing, yet are they such refreshment that to hear them again and others like to them, I would go to the gallows happy, as having had one good feast at least in a starved life. And I will say my say now, and ye may report it if ye be so minded. I helped to hang my neighbors for that it were peril to my own life to show lack of zeal in the master's cause; the others helped for none other reason. All rejoice to-day that he is dead, but all do go about seemingly sorrowing, and shedding the hypocrite's tear, for in that lies safety. I have said the words, I have said the words! the only ones that have ever tasted good in my mouth, and the reward of that taste is sufficient. Lead on, an ye will, be it even to the scaffold, for I am ready." There it was, you see. A man is a man, at bottom. Whole ages of abuse and oppression cannot crush the manhood clear out of him. Whoever thinks it a mistake is himself mistaken.(less)

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Jan 13, 2012 Jim rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: classics

I don't know why this book doesn't rank higher among the classics & isn't discussed more. Twain manages to highlight more of our human & modern society's ills & graces than any other book I've read. This is not just a man out of his time, but a journey of discovering just how large, fast changes, seemingly made for the best, can actually be horrifying with unforeseen consequences. (Sound familiar? Haven't we all been talking about how technology & the Internet has changed our liv...more

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May 31, 2011 Sarah rated it 3 of 5 stars

Like many satires I have read, this book started out as hilariously funny to me. I was just as enamoured with the idea of a “modern” (the term now relative) man entering the 6th century and using his knowledge to become one of its most famous and revered citizens. But also the case with many satirical works I read, after a certain point – I got bored. Hank’s adventures became predictable and almost disgusting and embarrassing to me. His pride, while I think not to be considered horribly overwhel...more

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Nov 21, 2010 Discordian rated it 5 of 5 stars

The king was in a flaming fury, and launched out his challenge and epithets with a most royal vigor. The knights were some little distance by now. They halted, greatly surprised, and turned in their saddles and looked back, as if wondering if it might be worth while to bother with such scum as we. Then they wheeled and started for us. Not a moment must be lost. I started for THEM. I passed them at a rattling gait, and as I went by I flung out a hair-lifting soul scorching thirteen-jointed insult...more

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Aug 03, 2010 Ruth Hinckley rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court is a train wreck of a novel that, if written today, would never have seen print. While notable for its innovation during its time and its hundred thousand imitators, the narrative is rambling, one-sided and frustrating.

The book begins well enough, with a nineteenth century factory boss being transported into the past, where his knowledge of obscure trivia and "modern" science saves his life and earns him a position as a wizard. King Arthur and his cour...more A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court is a train wreck of a novel that, if written today, would never have seen print. While notable for its innovation during its time and its hundred thousand imitators, the narrative is rambling, one-sided and frustrating.

The book begins well enough, with a nineteenth century factory boss being transported into the past, where his knowledge of obscure trivia and "modern" science saves his life and earns him a position as a wizard. King Arthur and his court are described as "innocent savages", which the main character (whose name is mentioned not more than twice in the book) starts out trying to civilize. The nobility, of course, are resistant to these changes, and so our protagonist sets about to undermine and unseat them.

From here it rumbles along with little in the way of character development, and 19th century technology developed whole cloth by a secret society of educated peasants. The narrative is interspersed with lengthy excerpts out of even more antiquated volumes - whose point or purpose is largely left unexplained - and lengthy jaunts into the countryside where every character who shows a bit of spirit is recruited into the secret technology schools, all under the nose of the oblivious king.

There is very little which actually poses a challenge to our hero, which makes the reader yearn for something to backfire on him. Eventually it does - through no fault of his own, of course - but the lessons he and Arthur learn in this episode are squandered as the ending is rushed to a conclusion, with the downfall of our hero orchestrated by the previously impotent but much-maligned Established Church.

At the end, there are questions left unanswered and foreshadowed promises left unfulfilled, with logical jumps and temporal leaps which confuse and frustrate. It almost seems to change voice in the middle, and more than once. Even as a satire it fails to satisfy, and a comedy it is most certainly not. To anyone wishing to familiarize themselves with the story, I recommend choosing one of its many imitators and enjoying yourself for an hour or a day with it. Your time will be better spent.(less)

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Aug 01, 2010 Benjamin added it · review of another edition

Shelves: audiobook

I don't know if anything will ever beat--for emotional intensity and moral education--Huck Finn's "All right, then, I'll go to Hell" (when he recognizes that Jim is as human as he is, and that he can either ignore that fact and get along in life, or be ejected from the world and hold on to that truth). Connecticut Yankee has no such moral clarity, which is both its promise and its curse.

The moral obscurity of Connecticut Yankee comes out to trouble the reader anytime the reader begins to get com...more I don't know if anything will ever beat--for emotional intensity and moral education--Huck Finn's "All right, then, I'll go to Hell" (when he recognizes that Jim is as human as he is, and that he can either ignore that fact and get along in life, or be ejected from the world and hold on to that truth). Connecticut Yankee has no such moral clarity, which is both its promise and its curse.

The moral obscurity of Connecticut Yankee comes out to trouble the reader anytime the reader begins to get comfortable with the frame here. I mean, a satirical critique is only understandable from a particular frame; that is, while critiquing some topic (say, Catholic superstition), Twain is privileging some other approach to the world (say, scientific progress), either implicitly or explicitly.

But Twain's satire here shifts over the course of the novel, until the reader may not have any dry place to stand in this sea of bitterness: when the novel starts, Hank Morgan may seem crafty and capable, a perfect trickster hero--Bugs Bunny, but with expertise in mechanics instead of cross-dressing. (It occurs to me now that there has to be a Bugs Bunny in King Arthur's Court version, and lo and behold.) And Morgan takes some hearteningly democratic and modern standpoints throughout the novel: he's for the small people; he recognizes the social pressures that substitute meaningless signs for actual economic progress (his chapter "6th Century Political Economy" might as well be called "What's the Matter with Camelot?" after Thomas Frank's book on Kansas); he seems capable of inventing all sorts of labor-saving devices; and he keeps a certain cool detachment that often prevents him from taking himself too seriously.

And, then, in the blink of an eye, he can kill a knight for telling a bad joke, organize the pulverization of the countryside, and talk about how he's spreading American-style democracy whether the people want it or no (and, well, you can't make an omelet without a few casualties). If you could read this book in 2000 and miss the satire on Morgan's rah-rah imperialism, it's harder to ignore post-"Operation Iraqi Freedom." (There's actually an entire article I read that makes the Morgan-Bush connection; it's slightly harder to imagine an article making the Bugs Bunny-Bush connection, if only because Bugs's wars are all defensive in fact.) While we might be horrified by the unchecked power wielded by Morgan le Fay, we also recognize King Arthur's heroism; as much as we recognize our historical gains in this novel (we have bicycles and voting!), we also recognize our historical losses by the end.

(One of my favorite ways that this uncertain position--both of gain and loss simultaneously--comes out in this novel is the use of language: Twain not only gives us this eerily pitch-perfect Arthurianisms, and the super-slangy Yankeeisms of Morgan, but he shows what happens when they collide; our first clue that Alisande might be more than just a damsel in distress is probably when she appreciates Morgan's idiom "hang out":

Then she said musingly, and softly, turning the words daintily over her tongue: "Hang they out -- hang they out -- where hang -- where do they hang out; eh, right so; where do they hang out. Of a truth the phrase hath a fair and winsome grace, and is prettily worded withal. I will repeat it anon and anon in mine idlesse, whereby I may peradventure learn it. Where do they hang out. Even so! already it falleth trippingly from my tongue..."

)

Lastly, as has been noted, some of this moral uncertainty has a lot to do with Twain's biography; for one thing, during the writing of this novel, he sunk a lot of money into the Paige Compositor, a type-setting machine that failed to work. So much for technology!

Note: One thing to note is that the moral uncertainty that troubles the reader of the text finds no purchase in Dan Beard's illustrations, which are very clear about their populist politics.(less)

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May 17, 2010 Scott rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: not everyone. Certainly not children

Shelves: classics, fantasy-sci-fi

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. There were a lot of surprises in this classic sci-fi/fantasy tale. After seeing so many adaptations and twists on this story in films and TV shows, I felt I owed it to myself to read the original. Parts were funny. Parts were appalling. I especially found the "I know best because I'm a modern man" attitude of the main character interesting. It was a perfect portrayal of the arrogance and optimism of modernism (to do away with everything of the past, and the naive belief that science and reason w...more

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