The Connecticut Yankee is a character in Mark Twain’s novel A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1889), which is arguably the most insightful and enduring American retelling of the legendary tales of the Knights of the Round Table. Although his work was idiosyncratic and immersed in its sense of its own Americanness, Twain’s story was firmly grounded in a deep knowledge of Arthurian myth. The protagonist of Twain’s novel, the eponymous Connecticut Yankee and inadvertent time traveler Hank Morgan, is transported back to Arthur’s England via a blow to the head. While the novel is a humorous satire of the foibles of the British aristocracy and the conventions of the medieval romance, it is also a serious critique of crucial philosophical concepts central to the American experiment and the American sense of identity, including such themes as monarchy versus democracy, free will versus determinism, and modern technology versus social thought.
Readers have been fascinated by stories of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table since the medieval era, and many American authors have tried to capture the mystery and magic of Avalon in a contemporary context so that their contemporaries could also enjoy the rich veins of folklore, fable, myth, and legend that are part and parcel of the Arthurian tradition. In Mark Twain’s day, the literature of King Arthur was undergoing a full-blown Victorian renaissance, a literary and artistic movement that is most notably remembered today through the work of Alfred Lord Tennyson, and in particular Tennyson’s The Idylls of the King, a dozen poetic renditions of the cycle of the adventures of the Knights of the Round Table, for the most part produced between the mid-1850s and the mid-1870s. It took the comic genius and cultural insight of Mark Twain, however, to find a way to inject an American icon into the rich tableau of the Arthurian romance, and thereby to develop apt literary and folkloric foils with which to critique not simply the Arthurian legends themselves, but also the highly popular Victorian adaptations of those tales, all the while slyly poking fun at the folkloric figure of the Yankee, a hard-headed, practical, profit-minded, independent, and self-made man. Thus, although Twain was certainly criticizing a British sense of literary nostalgia and national pride that could be seen as a cultural outgrowth of the rampant empire-building of the Victorian age, he was also to a certain extent lampooning some of the least attractive aspects of the American character, coincidentally those that most blossom in disagreements among British and Americans, including America’s outsized self-confidence and overbearing righteous indignation.
Various film versions of Twain’s classic tale demonstrate how the myth of the Connecticut Yankee remains an important fixture in American popular culture. For example, Walt Disney turned Twain’s account of Arthurian legend into an animated film in the 1978 Chuck Jones adaptation, A Connecticut Rabbit in King Arthur’s Court. Continuing interest in Arthurian legends in general and Twain’s engaging storyline in particular, in combination with time-proven, crowd-pleasing aspects of American myth and folklore, led Walt Disney to produce director Michael Gottlieb’s kids’ version of Twain’s burlesque with A Kid in King Arthur’s Court in 1995. Clearly American readers and viewers never tire of the American reworking of the Arthurian legends.
Although poorly received by initial readers, Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court has since become an American classic. Like Twain himself, his protagonist Hank traveled between worlds, and, though he was quick to find fault with the land to which he journeyed, in the end he was changed by his experiences and discovered that he could never completely feel comfortable in his old home again. In this poignant paradox Hank represents both Mark Twain in particular and his countrymen in general, which may in some small measure explain the abiding popularity of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.
Gerardo Del Guercio
See also Huck Finn; Twain, Mark; Yarns, Yarn-spinning
Further Reading
Blank, Trevor J. 2007. “Mark Twain (1835–1910).” In The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Folktales and Fairy Tales, edited by Donald Haase. Westport, CT: Greenwood.
Hart, James David, and Phillip Leininger, eds. 2004. “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.” The Oxford Companion to American Literature. New York: Oxford University Press.
Stableford, Brian. 2009. The A to Z of Fantasy Literature. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press.
Twain, Mark. 1998. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. New York: Oxford University Press.
Connecticut Yankee—Primary Document
Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1889)
The Yankees of the northeastern United States developed a reputation during the early nineteenth century for being overly opinionated, profit-obsessed, and self-righteous. They were stereotyped as a very industrious and civic people, being above all practical to a fault. Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) captured all these qualities in a satirical piece, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. While humorously describing the culture shock that a contemporary New Englander might experience if transported back to the sixth century, Twain critiques both cultures simultaneously. Twain was primarily focused on de-romanticizing Arthurian Britain, but ensured that this critique came through the eyes of a character who exemplified the worst of present-day New England.
KING ARTHUR’S COURT
The moment I got a chance I slipped aside privately and touched an ancient common looking man on the shoulder and said, in an insinuating, confidential way:
“Friend, do me a kindness. Do you belong to the asylum, or are you just on a visit or something like that?”
He looked me over stupidly, and said:
“Marry, fair sir, me seemeth—”
“That will do,” I said; “I reckon you are a patient.”
I moved away, cogitating, and at the same time keeping an eye out for any chance passenger in his right mind that might come along and give me some light. I judged I had found one, presently; so I drew him aside and said in his ear:
“If I could see the head keeper a minute—only just a minute—”
“Prithee do not let me.”
“Let you what?”
“Hinder me, then, if the word please thee better.”
Then he went on to say he was an under-cook and could not stop to gossip, though he would like it another time; for it would comfort his very liver to know where I got my clothes. As he started away he pointed and said yonder was one who was idle enough for my purpose, and was seeking me besides, no doubt. This was an airy slim boy in shrimp-colored tights that made him look like a forked carrot, the rest of his gear was blue silk and dainty laces and ruffles; and he had long yellow curls, and wore a plumed pink satin cap tilted complacently over his ear. By his look, he was good-natured; by his gait, he was satisfied with himself. He was pretty enough to frame. He arrived, looked me over with a smiling and impudent curiosity; said he had come for me, and informed me that he was a page.
“Go ‘long,” I said; “you ain’t more than a paragraph.”
It was pretty severe, but I was nettled. However, it never phazed him; he didn’t appear to know he was hurt. He began to talk and laugh, in happy, thoughtless, boyish fashion, as we walked along, and made himself old friends with me at once; asked me all sorts of questions about myself and about my clothes, but never waited for an answer—always chattered straight ahead, as if he didn’t know he had asked a question and wasn’t expecting any reply, until at last he happened to mention that he was born in the beginning of the year 513.
It made the cold chills creep over me! I stopped and said, a little faintly:
“Maybe I didn’t hear you just right. Say it again—and say it slow. What year was it?”
“513.”
“513! You don’t look it! Come, my boy, I am a stranger and friendless; be honest and honorable with me. Are you in your right mind?”
He said he was.
“Are these other people in their right minds?”
He said they were.
“And this isn’t an asylum? I mean, it isn’t a place where they cure crazy people?”
He said it wasn’t.
“Well, then,” I said, “either I am a lunatic, or something just as awful has happened. Now tell me, honest and true, where am I?”
“In King Arthur’s Court.”
I waited a minute, to let that idea shudder its way home, and then said:
“And according to your notions, what year is it now?”
“528—nineteenth of June.”
I felt a mournful sinking at the heart, and muttered: “I shall never see my friends again—never, never again. They will not be born for more than thirteen hundred years yet.”
I seemed to believe the boy, I didn’t know why. Something in me seemed to believe him—my consciousness, as you may say; but my reason didn’t. My reason straightway began to clamor; that was natural. I didn’t know how to go about satisfying it, because I knew that the testimony of men wouldn’t serve—my reason would say they were lunatics, and throw out their evidence. But all of a sudden I stumbled on the very thing, just by luck. I knew that the only total eclipse of the sun in the first half of the sixth century occurred on the 21st of June, A.D. 528, O.S., and began at 3 minutes after 12 noon. I also knew that no total eclipse of the sun was due in what to me was the present year—i.e., 1879. So, if I could keep my anxiety and curiosity from eating the heart out of me for forty-eight hours, I should then find out for certain whether this boy was telling me the truth or not.
Wherefore, being a practical Connecticut man, I now shoved this whole problem clear out of my mind till its appointed day and hour should come, in order that I might turn all my attention to the circumstances of the present moment, and be alert and ready to make the most out of them that could be made. One thing at a time, is my motto—and just play that thing for all it is worth, even if it’s only two pair and a jack. I made up my mind to two things: if it was still the nineteenth century and I was among lunatics and couldn’t get away, I would presently boss that asylum or know the reason why; and if, on the other hand, it was really the sixth century, all right, I didn’t want any softer thing: I would boss the whole country inside of three months; for I judged I would have the start of the best-educated man in the kingdom by a matter of thirteen hundred years and upward.
Source: Twain, Mark. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. New York: Charles L. Webster and Company, 1889.