Mark Twain’s Connecticut Yankee, William Morris, and the Problem of Late-Victorian Medievalism

Abstract

Far from being a mere rebuttal against romanticized views of the Middle Ages, Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court engages constructively with the medievalist milieu of the late-Victorian fin-de-siècle. Twain depicts sixth-century England as a time of squalor, but he extends a level of appreciation to the selflessness of King Arthur. Framing time-traveling rabble-rouser Hank Morgan as a symbol of both Enlightenment reformism and self-aggrandizing authoritarianism that justifies wanton violence through abstract claims of societal progress, Twain is as critical of industrial commercialism as of medieval feudalism. This article argues Twain engages with the same questions as the more overtly medievalist writers of the fin-de-siècle, specifically William Morris. While Morris was more laudatory toward the medieval period, this article asserts they both staunchly criticized the solipsism and obsession with technology they believed defined the industrial age without desiring merely to re-create the hierarchies of the past.