A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
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| A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court | |
 1889 frontispiece by Daniel Carter Beard |
|
| Author | Mark Twain |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Humor, Satire, alternate history, science fiction, fantasy |
| Publisher | Charles L. Webster |
| Publication date | 1889 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover, Paperback) |
| Pages | 575 pp |
| ISBN | NA |
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court is an 1889 novel by American humorist and writer Mark Twain. The work is a very early example of time travel in literature, anticipating by six years H. G. Wells' The Time Machine of 1895 (however, unlike Wells, Twain does not give any real explanation of his protagonist's travelling in time). Some early editions are entitled A Yankee at the Court of King Arthur.
Contents |
[edit] Plot
[edit] The Introduction to the "stranger"
The novel explains the tale of Hank Morgan, a 19th century citizen of Hartford, Connecticut who awakens to find himself inexplicably transported back in time to early medieval England at the time of the legendary King Arthur in AD 528.
The story itself begins in a first person narrative in Warwick Castle, where a man details his recollection of a tale told to him by a "curious stranger" who is personified as a Knight through his simple language and familiarity with ancient armor.[1]
After a brief tale of Sir Launcelot of Camelot and his role in slaying two giants from the third-person narrative, a man named Hank Morgan enters and, after being given whiskey by the narrator, he is persuaded to reveal more of his story. Described through first-person narrative as a man familiar of the firearms and machinery trade, Hank is a man who had reached a level of super-intendant due to his proficiency in firearms manufacturing, with two thousand subordinates. He describes the beginning of his tale by illustrating details a disagreement with his subordinates, where he sustained a head injury from a "crusher" to the head caused by a man named "Hercules" using a crowbar.[2] After passing out from the blow, Hank describes waking up underneath an oak tree in a rural area of Camelot where a Knight questions him for trespassing upon his land, and after establishing rapport, leads him towards Camelot castle. [3]
Hank is ridiculed at King Arthur's court for his strange appearance and dress, and sentenced by King Arthur's court (and particularly by the magician Merlin) to burn at the stake. By a miraculous stroke of luck, the date of the burning coincides with a historical solar eclipse in the year 528, which Hank had learned about in his own time. Recalling this fact, Hank uses it to convince the King and commoners that he possesses great power, by making it seem that he causes the eclipse of the sun at the moment when he is about to be burned at the stake. Following this act, he is liberated and given the position of principal minister to the King, and treated by all with utmost fear and awe. His celebrity brings him to be known by a new title, elected by the people: "The Boss." Hank is seen as not as a man, but a being of strange and mysterious powers.
[edit] The Takeover
After being made "the Boss", Hank learns about medieval practices and superstitions. With his superior knowledge, he is able to outdo the fake sorcerers and miracle-working church officials. This causes Merlin to become jealous of the sway he holds over the minds of others, as well as the power he wields as "the Boss". Despite being a high officer in court, Hank is willing to go among the people in order to promote new economic policies based on capitalism as well as democratic and modern principles. King Arthur chooses to join him on one of these excursions, during which he chooses to expose himself to smallpox in order to help a peasant boy. Despite this kingly act, he is unwilling to move away from his medieval way of thinking. He eventually causes the arrest of the incognito Hank and himself because he is unable to stop acting like a nobleman. Hank's plotting is able to free them when a group of bicycle-riding knights comes to their rescue.
[edit] Anachronisms
Hank, as "the Boss", has been using his modern knowledge to industrialize the country behind the back of the rest of the ruling class. For this purpose, he set up schools which taught modern ideas and modern English, thereby removing the new generation from medieval concepts. He also caused the construction of factories, which produced modern tools and weapons. He also gets married to a girl who he saved from a couple of pig farmers. They have a daughter together. While on vacation with his family in France, he receives a message that the people are revolting against his modern policies. He rushes back to England, and confronts a force of knights led by Merlin. Fighting with him are a group of loyal young people who have been trained to use modern weapons such as gatling guns. This group fails in its fight, and Merlin uses a spell to put Hank to sleep until he returns to his own time.
[edit] Use of Language
In order to make the medieval inhabitants seem quaint and naive, Twain uses an excessive amount of antiquated language (even having one of the characters recite a long romantic poem). This language is contrasted with the blunt, plain language of Hank Morgan, who is pictured as having greater common sense than the others.
[edit] Historical references
One of the more fanciful plot twists -- the use of an eclipse to fool an unsophisticated population -- is based on the actual story of Christopher Columbus, who on his fourth voyage used a similar trick (with an easier-to-predict lunar eclipse) to influence a population of West Indians.[4]
[edit] Commentary
While parts of the book poke fun at contemporary society, the main thrust is a satire of romanticized ideas of chivalry and of the idealization of the Middle Ages such as was common in 19th century literature, most notably perhaps in the novels of Sir Walter Scott, for whom Twain had a particular dislike, blaming his romanticization of battle for the decision of the Southern United States to fight the American Civil War. He writes in Life on the Mississippi:
It was Sir Walter that made every gentleman in the South a Major or a Colonel, or a General or a Judge, before the war; and it was he, also, that made these gentlemen value these bogus decorations. For it was he that created rank and caste down there, and also reverence for rank and caste, and pride and pleasure in them. [...] Sir Walter had so large a hand in making Southern character, as it existed before the war, that he is in great measure responsible for the war.
—Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi.[5]
For example, the book portrays the medieval people as being very gullible, as when Merlin makes a "veil of invisibility", which according to him will make the wearer imperceptible to his enemies, though friends can still see him. The knight Sir Sagramor wears it to fight Hank, who pretends he cannot see Sagramor for effect to the audience.
Critic Brian Attebery feels Twain's brutal social commentary undermines the two-fold satire of the story:
The very bludgeoning to which the ideals are exposed makes the satire less than effective. Hank describes himself as void of sentiment and poetry, acts in a rather Philistine manner, and despite being swept centuries into the past and across the ocean, refuses to believe that magic exists. Being unwilling to yield, he is unable to compromise with Camelot on anything, leading to chaos, and in the end, though he characterizes Merlin as a 'doddering old fool', Merlin is able to send him back with a few passes in the air.
—Brian Attebery, The Fantasy Tradition in American Literature.[6]
It is possible to see the book as an important transitional work for Twain, in that the earlier, sunnier passages recall the frontier humor of his tall tales like The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, while the corrosive view of human behavior on display in the apocalyptic latter chapters is more akin to darker, later Twain works like The Mysterious Stranger and Letters from the Earth.
[edit] Creation of a science fiction sub-genre
While the genre of science fiction dates significantly farther back than Mark Twain with such authors as Margaret Cavendish, Twain did create the sub-genre of the depiction of a modern time traveller arriving at an ancient society, anachronistically introducing modern technologies and institutions and completely changing its character. In this way, Twain's book precipitated an entire sub-genre of science fiction.[citation needed]
The best-known example is L. Sprague de Camp's Lest Darkness Fall in which an American archaeologist of the 1930s arrives at Ostrogothic Italy and manages to prevent the Dark Ages by introducing printing and other modern inventions. Leo Frankowski wrote the Conrad Stargard series where a 20th century Pole arrives in 13th century Poland and by rapid industrialization manages to defeat the Mongol invasion, as well as completely annihilating the Teutonic Knights.
Poul Anderson presented an antithesis in his story The Man Who Came Early, where a modern American who finds himself in Viking Iceland fails to introduce modern technologies despite being an intelligent, competent and well-trained engineer, and finds that in a 10th century environment 10th century technologies work best. Another antithesis was presented by Ford Madox Ford in his Ladies Whose Bright Eyes, where the time traveller, in spite of being a trained engineer, lacks the technical know-how to develop modern technology from scratch in medieval society. After some half-hearted attempts he "goes native" and makes a credible effort at becoming a knight.
A new twist was introduced by S. M. Stirling in the Nantucket books and Eric Flint in the 1632 series, where it is not a single modern individual but a whole modern community (American in both cases) which is transported into the past -- respectively to the Bronze Age and to the Germany of the Thirty Years' War -- correspondingly increasing the plausibility of their ability to influence the past.
In the view of some, this entire subgenre shares with Twain's original book the widespread mindset which regarded Western culture of its time as inherently superior to all other cultures, past and present. Specifically, it was asserted that Stirling's "Nantuckars" are depicted as embarking on colonial empire-building in the Bronze Age.
[edit] Film, television and theatrical adaptations
Since the beginning of the 20th century, this famous story has been adapted many times to stage, feature-length motion pictures, and animated cartoons. It was made into the 1927 musical, A Connecticut Yankee, by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart. A 1931 film, A Connecticut Yankee, starred Will Rogers. A 1949 musical film featured Bing Crosby and Rhonda Fleming, with music by Jimmy Van Heusen and Victor Young. In 1970 the book was adapted into a 74-minute animated TV special directed by Zoran Janjic with Orson Bean as the voice of the title character. More recently it was adapted into a 1989 TV movie by Paul Zindel which starred Keshia Knight Pulliam of The Cosby Show.
It has also inspired many variations and parodies such as the 1979 Bugs Bunny special, A Connecticut Rabbit In King Arthur's Court and Disney's Unidentified Flying Oddball. In 1995 Walt Disney Studios readapted the book, into the feature film A Kid in King Arthur's Court. As the title suggests, the protagonist of the Disney film is considerably younger than Twain's original character. In 1998, Whoopi Goldberg starred as the protagonist in A Knight in Camelot, as a physicist who is somehow accidentally sent back in time during an experiment gone bad. She procures the people's respect after predicting a solar eclipse by checking her computer, which was sent back in time with her along with other "convenient" things in her backpack. In 2001, actor and comedian Martin Lawrence portrayed Jamal/Skywalker, an American miniature golf park employee who goes back in time to 14th century England in the film Black Knight. Additionally, Twain's novel was extrapolated by Sam Raimi in the third installment of the Evil Dead film trilogy, Army of Darkness.
The BBC TV series Life on Mars has a premise similar to that of the novel. In the series the lead character, Sam Tyler played by actor John Simm wakes up after a 2006 car accident to find himself in 1973. The series explores Sam's attempts to adjust to life in the past and his quest to discover why he is there. The sixth episode of the first season features a character who refers to feeling like "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court", a sentiment with which Sam sympathizes. See also the sequel, Ashes to Ashes.
[edit] See also
- Solar eclipses in fiction
- List of films based on Arthurian legend
- A Dream of John Ball (1889) by William Morris
[edit] Notes
- ^ Twain, Mark., Clemens, Samuel. (2007), p1 -- "It was in Warwick Castle that I came across the curious stranger ...He attracted me by three things: his candid simplicity, his marvelous familiarity with ancient armor, and the restfulness of his company As the stranger recalls tales of Sir Launcelot another man enters the castle and, through a first-person narrative establishes himself"
- ^ Twain, Mark.,Clemens, Samuel. (2007), p2 -- "It was during a misunderstanding conducted with crowbars with a fellow we used to call Hercules. He laid me out with a crusher alongside the head that made everything crack"
- ^ Twain, Mark., Clemens, Samuel. (2007), p2 -- "At the end of an hour we saw a far-away town sleeping in a valley by a winding river; and beyond it on a hill, a vast gray fortress, with towers and turrets, the first I had ever seen out of a picture."
- ^ Christopher Columbus and the Lunar Eclipse. Starry Skies. Retrieved on 2008-05-30.
- ^ Mark Twain. Life on the Mississippi, ch 46.
- ^ Brian Attebery. The Fantasy Tradition in American Literature, pp. 80-81. ISBN 0-253-35665-2.
[edit] References
- Tuck, Donald H. (1974). The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy. Chicago: Advent, 104. ISBN 0-911682-20-1.
[edit] External links
- A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. The complete, fully illustrated text online
- SparkNotes on the book
- A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, available at Project Gutenberg.
- Free audiobook from LibriVox
- Mark Twain and Technology
