A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court was originally titled A Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. It is a fantasy satire, and I would also say Sci-Fi since it involves time travel. The eponymous narrator, mechanical engineer Hank Morgan, is transported from 1879 Connecticut to sixth-century England due to a heavy blow to his head.
It takes Hank a while to get his bearings and realize what has happened to him. He is quickly arrested and sentenced to death, but he uses his superior knowledge of science and history to convince Arthur and company that he is a powerful wizard. Merlin challenges him, but Hank always manages to outsmart the charlatan wizard.
Hank embraces his reputation, earns a position of authority in Arthur’s government, and sets out to improve the nation of “intellectual moles” he finds himself among.
…to banish oppression from this land and restore to all its people their stolen rights and manhood without disobliging anybody.
His aspirations are not merely scientific. Hank intends to end what, to his 19th-century mind, were outdated societal norms of serfdom, aristocracy, monarchy, judicial system, and the Catholic Church.
I was very happy. Things were working steadily toward a secretly longed-for point. You see, I had two schemes in my head which were the vastest of all my projects. The one was to overthrow the Catholic Church and set up the Protestant faith on its ruins – not as an Established Church, but a go-as-you-please one; and the other project was to get a decree issued by and by, commanding that upon Arthur’s death unlimited suffrage should be introduced, and given to men and women alike – at any rate to all men, wise or unwise, and to all mothers who at middle age should be found to know nearly as much as their sons at twenty-one.
As one would expect from Twain, there are moments of subtle and sublime humor. In much of the book, Hank and Arthur are traveling the realm incognito, and Hank, on several occasions, has great difficulty in coaching the king on how to act as a simple peasant.
The King looked puzzled – he wasn’t a very heavy weight intellectually. His head was an hour-glass; it could stow an idea, but it had to do it a grain at a time, not the whole idea at once.
Meanwhile, there is intrigue in King Arthur’s Court and treachery. There is a great contest between Hank and his few minions against the entrenched traditions of Knight Errantry, with a bit of pot-stirring by Merlin. I’ll spare the spoiler of how it ends.
Overall, I was disappointed. I’ve loved everything that I’ve read by Twain and wanted to read this for decades. I expected hilarious dialogue and farcical circumstances but found only a few bits to snicker at. But it wasn’t merely the doom of high expectations. I felt that Hank, and by proxy Twain, held humanity in contempt.
But finally it occurred to me all of a sudden that these animals didn’t reason; that they never put this and that together…
Well, there are times when one would like to hang the whole human race and finish the farce.
And yeah, there are times when I feel that way, but in this novel, that seems to be the prevalent theme. Not a fan.
Still, it was a read I needed to check off the list. I’m glad I read it, glad I’m done.
My Rating: 3 ½ out of 5 Stars
This novel satisfies the Chess Piece category in the What’s in a Name 2023 Challenge.
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