A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
by Mark Twain
512 pages // published in 1889 // adventure/humor classic lit
BOOK DESCRIPTION
Hank Morgan awakens one morning to find he has been transported from nineteenth-century New England to sixth-century England and the reign of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. Morgan brings to King Arthur’s utopian court the ingenuity of the future, resulting in a culture clash that is at once satiric, anarchic, and darkly comic.
Critically deemed one of Twain’s finest and most caustic works, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court is both a delightfully entertaining story and a disturbing analysis of the efficacy of government, the benefits of progress, and the dissolution of social mores. It remains as powerful a work of fiction today as it was upon its first publication in 1889.
Hank Morgan awakens one morning to find he has been transported from nineteenth-century New England to sixth-century England and the reign of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. Morgan brings to King Arthur’s utopian court the ingenuity of the future, resulting in a culture clash that is at once satiric, anarchic, and darkly comic.
Critically deemed one of Twain’s finest and most caustic works, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court is both a delightfully entertaining story and a disturbing analysis of the efficacy of government, the benefits of progress, and the dissolution of social mores. It remains as powerful a work of fiction today as it was upon its first publication in 1889.
Have you ever wondered about whether or not it would be great fun to be transported back in time to the Middle Ages? And if so, wouldn't the people there think you so smart for all your knowledge of modern conveniences, contraptions, and foreign ideas? Well, Mark Twain thought about this stuff. And he wrote a whole novel about it.
To be honest, I had hoped for more adventure and more humor than what I got out of it. Perhaps it's just personal reading tastes, but while the story is "okay"... it's just not one of those classics that reeled me in.
And I won't forgive Hank of his choice of wife. (Now, I won't call out her name in this review, but she knows who she is! Basically, her personality just got on my nerves -- but not Hank's.)
There are some interesting parts in there. I probably loved it best when Hank brought modern engineering feats to the Middle Ages, and how the people reacted to strange technologies. It was funny in certain areas.
I listened to this classic as a audiobook, and I think I enjoyed it better than had I been reading the book itself. I was able to enjoy the narrator's quirky voices at times, and was able to get through the book at a faster rate than had I picked up the book. To each his own though.
Contains some light cursing.
Minimum age to read: 14 and up.
Book #7 completed // Very Long Classic (500+ pages)
P.S. Like and vote for this review on Goodreads and Amazon.
I read this a year or two ago and felt the same way--it was interesting, I was glad to have finally read it, but it wasn't a classic I'd love t reread.
ReplyDelete