A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

Wow, we're really picking up some pace in the RUSC Literary Challenge! Have you been keeping up?

Let's move on to the fourth book of the challenge now, a novel written in 1889, and it's a story with a little bit of everything in it - humor, intrigue, satire, excitement - and is likely one of the world's first stories about time travel.

Since the times of the bards and the troubadours, many tales have been told about King Arthur and his round table. Those days of old when knighthood was in flower. One of the finest stories is not a legend from the dim past, but a tale first told little more than a century ago, by the most typical of American writers, Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known by his pseudonym, Mark Twain. 

Growing up in the port town of Hannibal on the Mississippi inspired the novels Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer. In fact, several of Mark Twain's books were loosely based autobiographical accounts of his own life, but A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court is the story of Hank Morgan, a 19th Century mechanic, who after a bump on the head, wakes up inexplicably under an oak tree in medieval Britain, in the year 528AD. 

After being hustled off to King Arthur's Court, he is imprisoned, tried and sentenced to death. Whilst awaiting his impending execution, it dawns upon him that, as crazy as it seems, he is in 6th century Arthurian Britain, and that since he's traveled through time, he is probably the smartest man on the planet right now.

Using his 'memory' of the next thirteen centuries to his advantage, he sets out to bargain with the King for his release, and uses an upcoming solar eclipse to prove his worth as a powerful and goodly sorcerer.

There have been several other dramatizations of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court which are available to download or listen to online. I have listed the links to these below:-

CBS Radio Mystery Theater

Favorite Story

NBC University Theater

Ford Theater

Because the novel raises questions into many injustices throughout the ages, most notably the absolute social inequality during medieval times, it was met with mixed reviews from both critics and advocates alike when it was first published. I'd love to know what your thoughts are? Do, as always, feel free to comment below.

Happy listening my friends,

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