YMMV / A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

• Alternative Character Interpretation: What exactly is the protagonist? A lost man trying to make the best of a situation? Or a man without respect for traditions, culture and history, trying to transform England into the next (first, whatever) United States with a jingoist POV? Or both/none?
• Americans Hate Tingle: Predictably, this book was controversial in Great Britain for its unfavorable depiction of Arthurian Legend, with the 1929 edition noting that it considered the book "a direct attack on [its] hereditary and aristocratic institutions". To which Twain would, of course, heartily agree.
• Anvilicious: Monarchy and aristocracy are bad. Chivalry is a sham. Religion is the enemy of science.
• Fridge Brilliance: King Arthur's reign was remembered as having been a "golden age" because Hank's technology made people's lives better during it.
• Older Than They Think:
  • A plot where protagonist in the "modern era" falls asleep and finds themselves transported to the golden age of King Arthur, only for the story to satirise the setting as backwards and illogical compared to modern sensibilities - this was all done before in The Dream of Rhonabwy, one of the tales in the Mabinogion.
  • This is one of the oldest examples of the Trapped in Another World literature genre, being Older Than Radio.
  • The myth that knights were so heavy that they had to be hoisted upon their horses by a crane is attributed to this book, but the first known instance of this gag is in a Punch magazine of 1843. The trope is Zig-Zagged because the book only mentions a "derrick" in passing; it was the 1931 film adaptation that fully milked the idea for laughs.

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