Anderson Rearick III’s Reviews > A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court > Status Update

Those in modern American politics who support minimum wage rises and who are also big and protectionism might do well to re-read this chapter and Mark Twain‘s satire of I’m thinking dogmatism in medieval England.

In the section when the Yank and King are being feasted there is a whole narrative in which a common guildsman describes his rise to wealth. The Yank then reveals his far greater wealth. In the section the yank is acting exactly like another of Twain‘s creations Tom Sawyer. He delights not only in taking down another’s pride but swimming in it himself. It’s less admirable in a man than in a boy.

The smallpox story is one of the saddest, the destruction of the manor house one of the grimmest. And the Yank’s plans for social revolution chilling.

Furthermore The coming of the Gutenberg Bible and all its other documents via the printing press changed Europe and England forever. So it is indeed a holy thing. Furthermore he has still yet to explain the supernatural transportation of himself from 18th century America to Sixth century Britain. The ironic voice needed an ironical observer of his own.

The Yank describes the monks fondling the newspaper as a supernatural holy thing. Although Morgan speaks with irony, he is, in fact, accurate. The printing press was the greatest advancement in western civilization since the wheel.

This alteration of his inner sense when reading the abrasive newspaper shows the Yank has been affected more than his sense of superiority would have guessed. A revolutionary who finds that he enjoys the quality of an aristocratic tea.

The joke of the stupidity of inherited privilege is getting old. Still I wonder what Twain’s would think of the current assertions that the meritocracy which he lauds in America would in his own nation be branded as “racist” and a producft of the patriarchy.

The Yankee’s pride about being a superior man is worrying.

When I started to the chapel, the populace uncovered and fell back reverently to make a wide way for me, as if I had been some kind of a superior being—and I was. I was aware of that.”

— A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain
https://a.co/4NrnUeG. Pride concerns

Twain’s portrayal of the poor slaves is awful but it sounds a lot more like American slave trade than a an accurate picture of the Middle Age practice.