History Literature / AConnecticutYankeeInKingArthursCourt

** RealLifeWritesThePlot: Twain had taken a break from writing it. When he came back to it, his outlook on life had soured immensely.

* StableTimeLoop: Played straight in a tragic YouCantFightFate manner.

* GenreDeconstruction: The book is a deconstruction of the Myth/KingArthur mythos, which a lot of Brits took offense to. (It was compared, at one point, to defecating on a national treasure.)

* Myth/KingArthur: Along with Queen Guenever, Sir Launcelot, {{Myth/Merlin}}, and other legendary characters. Mark Twain took much from ''Literature/LeMorteDarthur'' by Thomas Mallory.

* TimeTravel: To go backwards: a head injury knocks out Hank, who wakes up 13 centuries ago, in the time of Myth/KingArthur. To go forwards: Merlin puts Hank to [[RipVanWinkle sleep for 13 centuries]].

* ArbitraryScepticism: For a man who wakes up centuries in the past, Hank is surprisingly reluctant to believe that maybe magic exists.

* SnipeHunt: Averted. Everyone but the Yankee actually expects the harebrained quest they send him on to turn out to be genuine.

* AntiHero: Hank tells lies, kills people and permits others to kill.

* ValuesDissonance[=/=]DeliberateValuesDissonance: In-Universe,between the Yankee and the Arthurian Britons. The reader may also feel some disassociation from the Yankee's worldview, which is probably intentional.

* OneManIndustrialRevolution: Hank introduces nineteenth-century technology to sixth-century England. Hank develops bicycles, gunpowder, and even electricity, enriching the lives of the medieval peasants (until the Church declares Hank a heretic and abolishes his inventions).

* KingIncognito: Arthur does this at one point while journeying with Hank, who wants to show him first hand what life is like for his people.

* RedBaron: Hank Morgan's title is "The Boss"

* FishOutOfTemperalWater: Probably the TropeCodifier.

* ArtMajorPhysics: Upon contact with the electric fence, the Knights armour should have acted as a sort of Faraday cage, safely earthing the fences current without harming the warrior within. If the plates didn't allow the fence to conduct all the way to the ground, the many insulating (read: leather) parts of the armour (in particular the boots) would have protected the Knight anyway.
* AllJustADream: Possibly; Hank might just have been hit on the head too hard and dreamt the whole thing.

* HandWave: There's no explanation for how Hank got to Camelot in the first place. Similarly, the paradoxical implications of existing in two places at once while he sleeps for 13 centuries are also never addressed. There's a reference to "transmigration of souls" but that doesn't explain how Hank's body (and clothes) change centuries either.

* For all his skill and knowledge about modern (for the 19th century) technology, which he used to turn Arthurian Britain into a utopia, Hank Morgan can't do anything when his daughter falls sick. Thankfully, she gets better.
* Later, he can't do anything to stop the civil war that tears the country apart after Lancelot and Guenivere's affair is revealed. All he can do is use his advanced technology (gatling guns, electric barbed wire and telegraphs) to hold out against the reactionary knights, up until Merlin's spell (the only one shown to work) sends him back to the present.

''A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court'' is a classic 1889 novel written by MarkTwain. Hank Morgan, a resident of Hartford, Connecticut, suffers a blow to the head and inexplicably awakens to find himself in sixth century Britain. There, he is able to convince King Arthur that he is a powerful wizard and ends up assuming the job of the king's adviser, and attempts to impose modern technology and values onto the society.

** Particularly exemplified when a village blacksmith boasts of his wealth: he eight salt meat eight times a month, fresh meat ''twice'' a month, and has five chairs despite only having a family of three. Hank is from the 19th century and finds it laughable.

* TimeTravel: To go backwards: a head injury knocks out Hank, who wakes up in wakes up 13 centuries ago, in the time of Myth/KingArthur. To go forwards: Merlin puts Hank to [[RipVanWinkle sleep for 13 centuries]].

* KnightErrant: Hank reluctantly becomes one, and the knights of the round table also qualify.

* GenreDeconstruction: The book is a deconstruction of the KingArthur mythos, which a lot of Brits took offense to. (It was compared, at one point, to defecating on a national treasure.)

* KingArthur: Along with Queen Guenever, Sir Launcelot, {{Myth/Merlin}}, and other legendary characters. Mark Twain took much from ''Literature/LeMorteDarthur'' by Thomas Mallory.

* TimeTravel: To go backwards: a head injury knocks out Hank, who wakes up in wakes up 13 centuries ago, in the time of KingArthur. To go forwards: Merlin puts Hank to [[RipVanWinkle sleep for 13 centuries]].

* KingArthur: Along with Queen Guenever, Sir Launcelot, {{Merlin}}, and other legendary characters. Mark Twain took much from ''Literature/LeMorteDarthur'' by Thomas Mallory.

* a man who wakes up centuries in the past, Hank is surprisingly reluctant to believe that maybe magic exists.

* RockBeatsLaser - {{Subverted}}: During a joust Merlin steals Hank Morgan's lasso which he's been using to rope one knight after another. Everyone thinks The Boss is finished... only for him to draw a [[HandCannon Colt Dragoon]] and gun down his charging opponent. Morgan then challenges anyone who thinks he didn't fight fair to attack him then and there -- and has an OhCrap moment when several hundred knights charge him at once. Fortunately they break and run before he runs out of bullets.

* StableTimeLoop: Though averted in one animated adaptation -- the hero wakes up in the present-day hospital and immediately goes to an encyclopedia to look up King Arthur... and bursts out laughing when he finds a picture of [[MyHorseIsAMotorbike the king straddling a motorcycle]].

* TimelineAlteringMacGuffin: The inventor himself.

''A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court'' is a classic 1889 novel written by MarkTwain, about, well, [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin exactly that]]. Hank Morgan, a resident of Hartford, Connecticut, suffers a blow to the head and inexplicably awakens to find himself in sixth century Britain. There, he is able to convince King Arthur that he is a powerful wizard and ends up assuming the job of the king's adviser, and attempts to impose modern technology and values onto the society.

* RealitySubtext: MarkTwain's life was seriously affected by family death at the time. Twain was in a "RageAgainstTheHeavens" mode.