Book Description

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court is a "framed story." That is, the first chapter tells how a tourist in England, presumably Mark Twain, meets a stranger who tells him part of his story and then gives him a manuscript that tells the rest of his strange tale. In the last chapter, the tourist has finished reading the manuscript and searches out the stranger, only to find him dying and calling out for the wife and daughter whom he had lived with in sixth-century England. In the first chapter, this stranger (we later learn that his name is Hank Morgan, but he is usually referred to in the novel as The Boss) tells the tourist that he was something of a jack-of-all-trades who had a particular aptitude for making and inventing things mechanical. He is from Hartford, Connecticut, where he had been head superintendent in a munitions factory until, in a fight with one of the workers, he was hit in the head with a crowbar. When he awakened, he was sitting in the grass under a tree. A man in old-fashioned armor took him prisoner, and they rode off to what Hank Morgan believed would probably be an insane asylum. At this point in the story, this stranger begins to feel very sleepy, so he gives the tourist the manuscript detailing his adventures, which he has written from the journals that he kept. The first chapter of the manuscript (the introductory chapter is technically a prologue) begins with the knight and Hank Morgan riding through a quiet countryside that Morgan does not recognize. After a time, they arrive in a small, wretched town and pass through the gates of a huge castle; they then enter into a great paved court. Trying to find out what asylum this is, Hank Morgan talks with a young man who tells him that the year is 528 and that the day is June 19; Morgan has been captured by Sir Kay the Seneschal, and he will be exhibited before the court. Then he will be sent to the dungeons to either rot or be ransomed.At the feast around the Round Table, Sir Kay's turn to tell of his adventures finally arrives, but he is interrupted by Merlin, who tells the story of how King Arthur got his sword from the Lady of the Lake; he puts the entire crowd to sleep. When Sir Kay does tell his story, he exaggerates immensely. Then Arthur sentences Morgan to die at noon on the 21st. Morgan is stripped of his "enchanted" clothes and is hauled off to the dungeons.