Audiobook · read by volunteers
À Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
Mark Twain (1835–1910)
Read by Steve Andersen · 45 chapters · 13 h 42
About the book
Hank Morgan is a practical, modern Connecticut man, a factory superintendent who knows how to make guns, run machinery and sell an idea. After a blow to the head, he wakes up in sixth-century England, at the court of King Arthur, and sets about improving things. Known as The Boss, he introduces newspapers, telegraphs and soap, and takes on knights, wizards and the powerful Church.
Mark Twain’s novel is a comic fantasy with a satirical edge, a clash between the American present and a romantic past. It begins in laughter and takes some darker turns. It follows a man who tries to civilise Camelot. In forty-five sections and almost fourteen hours, this recording offers a boisterous mix of adventure, parody and social comment. Twain sets modern common sense against medieval pomp, and neither side comes away unscathed.
Introduction
Mark Twain (1835–1910) was the pen name of Samuel Clemens, the Missouri-born author of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court appeared in 1889, in the age of rapid industrial change, and it reflects a mixture of enthusiasm and anxiety about modern technology. Twain had a long interest in inventions and in the way they alter society.
The story follows Hank Morgan, a practical man of the nineteenth century who finds himself, without explanation, at the court of the legendary King Arthur. Hank, soon known simply as the Boss, tries to bring the benefits of the nineteenth century to the sixth. The book is a satire of the romantic image of the Middle Ages, which was fashionable in Victorian literature, and also of the Yankee himself, whose confidence in progress turns out to have limits. Twain makes fun of chivalry, superstition and political power, and in the later chapters the humour gives way to a sharper critique of violence and of the faith in progress that could justify it.
Critics have long discussed whether the book is more a comedy or a warning. It has had a wide influence on later time-travel stories and on stage and film adaptations.
The recording has 45 sections and lasts about thirteen and a half hours. It is read by a single LibriVox volunteer. Why listen now? Because it is funny, unpredictable and surprisingly thoughtful. It asks what happens when new ideas meet old habits, a question that has lost none of its relevance.
Public domain
Mark Twain died in 1910: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text