Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

Later in life, Twain wrote that Connecticut Yankee ôwas an attempt to imagine, and after a fashion set forth, the hard conditions of life for the laboring and defenseless poor in bygone times in England, and incidentally contrast these conditions with those under which the civil and ecclesiastical pets of privilege and high fortune lived in those times.ö Twain makes that comparison, excoriating the privileged in the process. Furthermore, Twain wrote that he ôwas purposing to contrastàthe English life of the whole of the Middle Ages, with the life of modern Christendom and modern civilizationùto the advantage of the latter, of courseö (Twain 322).

Yet some of Connecticut Yankee contradicts that notion. Hank Morgan, the protagonist, is imbued with a sense of superiority based solely on his knowledge of technology. He makes it his goal to bring these poor sixth-century peasants into modern times, to rid them of their silly superstitions. Yet throughout the book, Hank uses superstition to gain control over the very people he w

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rary iconùKing Arthurùraised the hackles of the London Daily Telegraph. ôA bookàthat tries to deface our moral literary currency by bruising and soiling the image King Arthur, as left to us by legend and consecrated by poetry, is a very unworthy production of the great humourist's penö (Ensor 328). The Daily Telegraph basically accused him of blasphemy, declaring that to ômake a jest of facts, phrases, or wordsùScriptural, heroic, or legendaryùthat are held in awe or reverence by other menà[trains] a rising generation to respect nothingö (Ensor 329). Twain likely enjoyed such hyperbole; indeed, that may have been the reaction he sought. English critics reacted so vehemently because Connecticut Yankee hit close to home even at the end of the 1800s. The Daily Telegraph was not so much defending a legend as it was defending a 19th-century way of life that retained many of the characteristics of Camelot. Class still mattered in England, and even with democracy, aristocracy still ruled. The Daily Telegraph interpreted Twain's depiction of Camelot as an unfavorable comparison between ôoldö England and America, a younger nation with egalitarian values. The Daily Telegraph goes on to defend feudalism as ônot all evil. No doubt the
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Approximate Word count = 2330
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page)

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