Explore A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthurs Court Curated By Mark Twain Offered As Physical Edition

a Yankee from Early America, has found himself in the sixth century, He's now a pupil of King Arthur, a member for Britain, and he's challenged that time periods most magical and dangerous manMerlin, However, with his superior knowledge and the sciences from his world he is easily able to out stage and out smart not only Merlin, and all other challengers, but the Kingdom itself.
He starts small, wanting to add soap and bathing into the equation for cleaner and more sanitary persons, He moves to advancing the sixth century into the power and magic of a Republic, hoping to take the country without blood and making all people free and equal, Along his adventures he finds how simple minded and superstitious these people are and plays to their weaknesses, If only they would listen to his amazing superiority and high intellect then they could find the joy and peace that he has imagined for them,
I found this book a quite difficult read, For someone who loves the King Arthur tales and the medieval time period this read was a horrible twist of the lifestyle and ways of a people, It made out Merlin, King Arthur, Lancelot, and all the people involved as mere simpletons that cared not for the world, the goingon's around them and in particular made them appear illogical and selfoppressed.
"The Boss", as Hank became known and titled, thought that only his way and ideas could be right and therefore didn't care to listen to others opinions or let things stay the way they were with others or the kingdom.
The book was also boring at times, adding to my difficulty in getting through it as I particularly did not like the main character as I found him rude, closeminded, and particularly belittling of others.
Mark Twain definitely knows how to skew a perspective, a classic story, and get a point across, A book about going to a backwards place, dominated by an ignorant faith and blowing a lot of stuff up in the name of freedom, If you can be noncynical enough, you might be able to find sympathy for our American freedomfighters in Iraq by reading of Hank's wellmeaning attempt at a sociopolitical overhaul, I won't tell you how it ends, but your world won't be too rocked, This book is really amazing to read from our contemporary perspective, Here's a cuspindustrial mind writing on the dark ages, It's sort of like we get to timetravel twice,

Somehow though, Twain manages to seem more than ahead of the dark ages, more than ahead of his own time, he seems ahead of our time, His book, as it sees Arthurian England ratchet awkwardly up to theth Century brings to light the same issues we are dealing with today, The benefits versus the costs of technology, the tenaciousness of class lines and the ignorance produced by religious faith, It's very much worth the time today to read a great American's thinking on these issues and be reminded that though ideals are necessary for advancement, they must put humanity first or be made monstrous.


Also, look out for some very, very dry humor, I know I didn't pick up all of it, but what I did was a treat, Finally, I recommend getting an edition that includes the original illustrations they're beautiful and funny, When Connecticut mechanic and foreman Hank Morgan is knocked unconscious, he wakes not to the familiar scenes of nineteenthcentury America but to the bewildering sights and sounds of sixthcentury Camelot.
Although confused at first and quickly imprisoned, he soon realises that his knowledge of the future can transform his fate, Correctly predicting a solar eclipse from inside his prison cell, Morgan terrifies the people of England into releasing him and swiftly establishes himself as the most powerful magician in the land, stronger than Merlin and greatly admired by Arthur himself.
But the Connecticut Yankee wishes for more than simply a place at the Round Table, Soon, he begins a far greater struggle: to bring American democratic ideals to Old England, Complex and fascinating, A Connecticut Yankee is a darkly comic consideration of the nature of human nature and society, “A democracy will survive until it has an established church, ” Mark Twain

I sometimes have a hard time getting firedup over literary fiction unless I can find elements of nonfiction within the story to engage with, Twain, one of my favorite authors, always delivers ample engagement,

“I was training a crowd of ignorant folk into experts, experts in every sort of handiwork and scientific calling, These nurseries of mine went smoothly and privately along undisturbed in their obscure country retreats for nobody was allowed to come into their precincts without a special permit for I was afraid of the church” chapter, The Beginnings of Civilization

If you are familiar with thefilm adaptation of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court Bing Crosby, Rhonda Fleming, yada, yada, yada but havent yet read the novel you are in for a surprise.
The film is a whimsical, musical, technicolor romp, The novel is not.

“I was afraid of a united church, it makes a mighty power, the mightiest conceivable, And then when it by and by gets into selfish hands, as it is always bound to do, it means death to human liberty and paralysis to human thought, ” ibid

Published in, Twains novel chronicles the adventures of ath century engineer who somehow gets transported back to theth century, Finding himself amidst the likes of King Arthur and Sir Lancelot and Lady Guinevere, he decides, after a little thought, to take full advantage of his situation, Twains Yankee sets himself up as an incredibly talented wizard and then proceeds to introduces technology

to a population of knights, serfs and feudal lords,

“It being my conviction that any Established Church is an established crime, an established slavepen” chapter, Morgan Le Fay

Twains reiterations are indicative of his commitment to the separation of church and state.
It is a blatantly obvious theme but one that is seldom discussed and often overlooked, Why

"Concentration of power in a political machine is bad and an Established Church is only a political machine it was invented for that it is nursed, cradled, preserved for that it is an enemy to human liberty, and does no good which it could not better do in a splitup scattered condition.
" chapter, The Queens Dungeons

Mark Twain was as much of a philosopher as he was a novelist, An intellectual realist and a bit of a heretic hiding in plain sight, Mark Twain is dead to me, Ok, so he's dead anyways, but you know what I mean, This book is terrible! TERRIBLE! How terrible Well, over the span ofdays I only got to themark and I just could not force myself to finish it, Why was this book so hard to read A primary example would be the fact that at one point, a single sentence spans THREE WHOLE PAGES of the book.
That's right. You have to read three full pages of text until you finally see a period, While perhaps an impressive use of semicolons and other punctuation in order to drag that nonsense out, I think it was supposed to be some kind of attempt at humor to show how the character that went on a single sentence monologue was verbose.
But that could have been achieved without making the reader actually read, you know, a freaking three page sentence! And that was just the tip of the 'this book is awful' iceberg for me.
This was just one big rant about religion, the whole system of monarchs/royalty/nobility, and apparently the idiocy of everyone in medieval times, poorly disguised as a book, It's not subtle, it's relayed in a way that's almost impressively boring, and it's generally obnoxious whenever it attempts to be humorous, I would in fact wish this book on my worst enemy because being forced to read this whole thing would be a good form of nonviolent punishment!

Buddy read with sitelinkJeff and sitelinkAnne I read this years ago, mostly on a commuter train between New Jersey and New York, and I'm convinced the other commutersmostly men in suitsmust have thought I was bonkers because I kept bursting out in laughter.
There was one passage I remember rereading several times, just to see if I could get through it WITHOUT laughing, Alas, no! They really must have thought I was nuts that day, Sure, there is a lot that is improbable and questionable in this book, especially in the setup guy gets hit in the head and is transported back in time but it gathers strength as it goes, ultimately becoming quite a darkly comedic gem.
A lateth century American travels back in time to Arthurian England, This, of course, not really Arthurian England, or even medieval England, but a sort of mythical Dark Age with Arthurian elements, Twain had quite a bit to say about the past that his accidental time traveler finds himself in, Though that relates at least as much, if not more so, to his present day than it did to the Middle Ages, It can be funny, even darkly so, at times, NON CI RESTA CHE PIANGERE


Viaggio indietro nel tempo anche il fortunato film di Giuseppe Bertolucci con Roberto Benigni e Massimo Troisi del,

Un comune mortale, nato e cresciuto in Connecticut, durante una lite rimedia un colpo in testa e si trova misteriosamente e inspiegabilmente trasportato indietro nel tempo e in un altro luogo: lInghilterra di re Artù,d.
C.
Viene presto preso per mago visto che le sue conoscenze sono circa quindici secoli più sviluppate non bisogna dimenticare che anche per il XIX secolo lamericano Hank ha conoscenze tecniche piuttosto sviluppate.
Merlino, il mago ufficiale dellepoca, è retrocesso, e lo yankee viene perfino chiamato il Capo,
Se non che lintruso si comporta abbastanza come un colonialista, trattando dallalto in basso la gente di Camelot, quando va bene con paternalismo, quando invece con disdegno e superiorità.

Tuttavia sarà proprio una magia di Merlino a rimandarlo nella sua giusta epoca,



Se Hank è bravissimo tecnologicamente, perfettamente al pari col suo tempo, è comunque piuttosto ignorantello in storia, del medioevo sa poco o nulla, e la sua presunzione di moderno americano civilizzato rende i cavalieri, per quanto sporchi e creduloni, simpatici e luminosi.


Uno dei primi esempi di viaggio nel tempo, per quello che mi riguarda, il primo che ho letto, e sicuramente il più divertente, Anche perché il mio film Disney preferito è proprio La spada nella roccia, ho un debole per Artù, i suoi cavalieri, le donzelle e perfino la tavola rotonda,

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