A CONNECTICUT YANKEE IN KING ARTHUR'S COURT

'''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

Plot

Tale of a "curious stranger"

Anachronisms

Commentary

Creation of a science fiction sub-genre

Film, television and theatrical adaptations

See also

References

External links

Plot

Tale of a "curious stranger"

The novel tells 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, who is described as English despite mythology which details his Celtic roots.
The story itself begins in a third and 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 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 correctly predicting 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 a man, but a being of strange and mysterious powers.

Anachronisms

Hank uses his comprehensive technological knowledge and Yankee ingenuity to modernize the superstitious, brutal and ignorant old English society and advance himself. While successfully starting a patent office, printing newspapers, mounting soap advertisements on knights and initiating industrialization, Hank's efforts are eventually undone by entrenched power embodied in the Roman Catholic Church. Modern society's own darker side is finally exhibited as Hank and his cadre of specially indoctrinated teenagers use gatling guns and electric fences to butcher tens of thousands of knights from an entrenched bunker. With Hank's technologies expunged, Merlin, portrayed previously as an utter charlatan, somehow transports him back to the present.
With its anachronistic technology, such as the telegraph, bicycle, etc., the book has a claim to being the first steampunk tale. It is also recognized as among the first time travel stories.

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. For example, the book portrays the medieval English 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:

Creation of a science fiction sub-genre

Twain's book precipitated an entire sub-genre of science fiction, characterized by the depiction of a modern time traveller arriving at an ancient society, anachronistically introducing modern technologies and institutions and completely changing its character.
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 make 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.

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 1929 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 James Van Heusen and Victor Young. In 1970 the book was adapted into a 74-minute animated TV special directed by Zoran Janjic.
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 revolves around a similar premise to 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" to which Sam sympathizes.

See also

★ Solar eclipses in fiction

★ List of films based on Arthurian legend

References

1. 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''"
2. 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''"
3. 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.''"

External links

★ A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. The complete, fully illustrated text online

★ SparkNotes on the book

★

★ Free audiobook from LibriVox

★ Mark Twain and Technology