A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

Summary

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, published in 1889, is Mark Twain's satirical novel of a modern American transported to sixth-century England. A stranger met at Warwick Castle tells the story and gives the narrator his manuscript. Hank Morgan, head superintendent at the Colt arms factory in Hartford, is struck on the head with a crowbar and wakes in Camelot in the year 528. Captured and condemned to burn, he remembers that a solar eclipse is due and claims to cause it, terrifying the court into making him the king's minister. Called simply The Boss, he begins to modernize the kingdom. He sets up schools, factories, newspapers, a patent office, telephone lines and secret 'man-factories' to train people in modern ideas. He outdoes the magician Merlin with gunpowder and engineering, rides on a quest with the talkative damsel Alisande, whom he calls Sandy and later marries, and restores the flow of the Holy Fountain. Travelling in disguise through the countryside with King Arthur, he sees the misery of the peasants, and the two are sold into slavery, an experience that teaches the king about cruelty. Twain uses the medieval setting to attack monarchy, aristocracy, slavery and an established church, and he praises the dignity of ordinary people: a man is a man, at bottom. But Hank's progress ends in disaster. While he is away, a quarrel among the knights over Lancelot and Guenever leads to war; Arthur is killed, and the Church lays an interdict on the land. Hank and a few dozen boys he has trained defend themselves in a cave with electric fences and machine guns, killing thousands of knights, but they are trapped by the bodies of the dead. Merlin casts a spell that makes Hank sleep for thirteen centuries. The comic satire ends darkly, and readers continue to debate whether Twain was celebrating or questioning modern technology and American confidence.

Top Lessons

• Satire of privilege

  Twain mocks inherited rank and blind loyalty.

• Progress and power

  Hank's technology brings both reform and slaughter.

• Learning by suffering

  King Arthur learns about cruelty when he becomes a slave.

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