A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court begins as a delightful comedy of contrasts. Hank Morgan, a practical Connecticut engineer, is knocked unconscious in a fight and wakes up in 528 AD Britain, where knights in shining armor joust, Merlin presides as advisor to the King, and the whole country runs on feudal superstition. Morgan, convinced he can "boss the whole country inside of three weeks," proceeds to introduce Camelot to electricity, railroads, and newspapers, transforming the sleepy medieval kingdom into something disturbingly like industrial America. But Twain isn't writing a simple fish-out-of-water tale. Beneath the slapstick and vernacular humor lies a vicious satire of American optimism, technological hubris, and the notion that progress is inherently good. The novel's dark turn forces readers to confront what happens when a man armed with 19th-century weapons and 19th-century confidence decides to reshape the world in his image. It's Mark Twain at his most ambitious, most funny, and most frightening.
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“You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.””
— Mark Twain
“THERE were two “Reigns of Terror,” if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the “horrors” of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror”
— Mark Twain
“You can't reason with your heart; it has its own laws, and thumps about things which the intellect scorns.””
— Mark Twain
“My kind of loyalty was loyalty to one's country, not to its institutions or its officeholders. The country is the real thing, the substantial thing, the eternal thing; it is the thing to watch over, and care for, and be loyal to; institutions are extraneous, they are its mere clothing, and clothing can wear out, become ragged, cease to be comfortable, cease to protect the body from winter, disease, and death.””
— Mark Twain
“Words are only painted fire, a look is the fire itself. She gave that look, and carried it away to the treasury of heaven, where all things that are divine belong.””
— Mark Twain
“whenever the literary german dives into a sentence, this is the last you are going to see of him till he emerges on the other side of his atlantic with his verb in his mouth.””
— Mark Twain
“You can't throw too much style into a miracle.””
— Mark Twain
“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.””
— Mark Twain
“How empty is theory in the presence of fact!””
— Mark Twain
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Twain, Mark. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. Lex, lex-books.com/book/a-connecticut-yankee-in-king-arthur-s-court-c7c9d881-59aa-4b50-91ce-7db517b51d5d.Twain, M. (n.d.). A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/a-connecticut-yankee-in-king-arthur-s-court-c7c9d881-59aa-4b50-91ce-7db517b51d5dTwain, Mark. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/a-connecticut-yankee-in-king-arthur-s-court-c7c9d881-59aa-4b50-91ce-7db517b51d5d.
