A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
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 1889 frontispiece by Daniel Carter Beard |
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| Author | Mark Twain |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Alternate history, Science fiction, Humour |
| Publisher | Charles L. Webster |
| Released | 1889 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover, Paperback) |
| 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.
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[edit] Plot summary
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. Hank uses his comprehensive technological knowledge and Yankee ingenuity to modernize the superstitious, brutal and ignorant old English society and advance himself. While successfully 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 one of the first time travel stories ever written (recognized as the first time travel story in which the character goes backwards in time).
[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.[citation needed] For example, the book portrays the medieval English as being very gullible, as when Merlin makes a "veil of invisibility" that actually does not exist. According to Merlin, when the veil is worn, it serves to hide the wearer from only his enemy i.e. audience members and the like can still see the wearer. It doesn't work because Sir Sagramor, the knight who wears the veil is completely visible to Hank, his rival in the tournament. Hank pretends that he can't see Sir Sagramor for effect to the audience.
"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.[1]
[edit] Film, TV or theatrical adaptations
This famous story has been adapted to stage, feature-length motion pictures, and animated cartoons numerous times since the beginning of the 20th century.
It was made into the 1929 musical A Connecticut Yankee by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart.
In 1931, it was made into a film, A Connecticut Yankee, starring Will Rogers.
In 1949, it was reworked into a film starring Bing Crosby and Rhonda Fleming, this time with music composed by James Van Heusen and Victor Young.
In 1970, it was made into an animated 74-minute tv special of the same name directed by Zoran Janjic. [1]
It has also inspired many variations and parodies. One of many is the 1995 Walt Disney Studios adaptation of the book into a feature film under the name 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 at 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/comedian Martin Lawrence portrayed Jamal/Skywalker, someone who goes back in time to 14th century England, in the film Black Knight.
[edit] Anticipation of The First World War
In the battle depicted in the last part of the book, thousands of medieval knights get massacred when trying to storm a strongpoint equipped with machine guns and surrounded by barbed wire. Stripped of Twain's obvious and intentional anachronism, the scene seems a quite accurate prediction of what was to happen in the battles of the First World War, two decades after the book's publication (or to put it otherwise, the actual bayonet-wielding WWI soldiers turned out to be as disastrously anachronistic as Twain's fictional knights).
[edit] Creation of a SF sub-genre
Twain's book could be considered to have (unintentionally) founded 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 1930's 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 Twentieth Century Pole arrives in Thirteenth Century Poland and by rapid industrialization manages to defeat the Mongol invasion, as well as completely annihilating the Teutonic Knights.
Poul Anderson presented an anti-thesis 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 Tenth Century environment Tenth Century technologies work best.
Another anti-thesis 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 mediaeval 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 sub-genre 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] References
- ^ Brian Attebery, The Fantasy Tradition in American Literature, p 80-1, ISBN 0-253-35665-2
[edit] See also
| Works of Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) |
|---|
| Fiction: Advice for Little Girls • The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County • General Washington's Negro Body-Servant • My Late Senatorial Secretaryship • Mark Twain's (Burlesque) Autobiography and First Romance • The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today • The Adventures of Tom Sawyer • 1601: Conversation, as it was by the Social Fireside, in the Time of the Tudors • The Prince and the Pauper • Adventures of Huckleberry Finn • A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court • The American Claimant • Tom Sawyer Abroad • Pudd'nhead Wilson • Tom Sawyer, Detective • Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc • The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg • A Double Barrelled Detective Story • Edmund Burke on Croker and Tammany • A Dog's Tale • King Leopold's Soliloquy • The War Prayer • The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • A Horse's Tale • Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven • Letters from the Earth • The Mysterious Stranger • No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger Non Fiction: The Innocents Abroad • Memoranda (monthly column) • Roughing It • Old Times on the Mississippi • A Tramp Abroad • Life on the Mississippi • How to Tell a Story and other Essays • Following the Equator • What Is Man? • Christian Science • Is Shakespeare Dead? • Queen Victoria's Jubilee • Mark Twain's Autobiography • Mark Twain's Notebook • Mark Twain's Weapons of Satire: Anti-Imperialist Writings on the Philippine-American War • The Bible According to Mark Twain: Writings on Heaven, Eden, and the Flood Short Story Books: Sketches New and Old • A True Story and the Recent Carnival of Crime • Punch, Brothers, Punch! and other Sketches • Merry Tales • The £1,000,000 Bank Note and Other New Stories |
