A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
68A Comparison between Book and Movie
In the 19th century, the Romantic revival was thriving and strong interest of history, religion, and nationalism was emerging (Brown). Sir Thomas Malory’s book Le Morte de Arthur was reprinted and redistributed as an ideal for romanticism at its best. The love interest between King Arthur and Guinevere, then Lancelot and Guinevere provided a good foothold for conversations. Lord Alfred Tennyson’s Idylls of the King appeared around this time, too. Mark Twain’s book, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, in which Twain’s illustrator pokes fun at Tennyson and draws him as Merlin, sparks some writers to think less of Twain due to his portrayal of King Arthur.
In his novel, Twain’s main character, The Boss, travels back in time due to a head wound. This is not the typical story of King Arthur. The Boss ends up in King Arthur’s time and is immediately assaulted by Sir Kay, who proceeds to “capture” him and take him to Arthur’s court. After convincing Arthur he is more powerful than Merlin by blotting out the sun and blowing up Merlin’s tower, The Boss modernizes the land by creating schools, bicycles, telephones, running water, and electricity. About a hundred years later in 1970, an animated film named A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court was produced by Air Programs International and directed by Zoran Janjic (Harty). It copies Twain’s story line and humor, but updates it for the modern man, more specifically for the youth. Since Twain isn’t an Englishman, he has no duty to uphold the Arthurian name. Because Mark Twain took the liberties of changing the King Arthur story by making Arthur unaware of his kingdom, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court gets bad reviews from the British and favorable reviews from the Americans. When the animated film version of his novel arrives, the legend is twisted further to encompass more modern ideas.
In the nineteenth century Romantic revival, people were still avid fans of King Arthur. The Europeans thought of him as a legendary heroic person and one that should be lifted up. Due to this ideology, his book was not too readily accepted. In 1890, the London Daily Telegraph wrote: “We have every regard for MARK TWAIN -- a writer who has enriched English literature… A book, however, that tries to deface our moral and literary currency by bruising and soiling the image of King ARTHUR, as left to us by legend and consecrated by poetry, is a very unworthy production of the great humourist's pen… Will this shrine in human souls be destroyed because a Yankee scribe chooses to fling pellets of mud upon the high altar” (Unsigned*)? The article continues, saying that Americans have no conscience, don’t help the needy, wouldn’t think of suppressing slander, and hold no value of marriage, all of which were upheld in King Arthur’s time. This may seem harsh, but coming from London, it is a fair judgment seeing as the Europeans learned about Arthur in history classes, where as in America he is not taught as an essential part of history.
There were some good reviews of his book by Harper’s Magazine: “The delicious satire, the marvellous wit, the wild, free, fantastic humor are the colors of the tapestry, while the texture is a humanity that lives in every fibre. At every moment the scene amuses, but it is all the time an object-lesson in democracy. It makes us glad of our republic and our epoch; but it does not flatter us into a fond content with them; there are passages in which we see that the noble of Arthur's day, who battened on the blood and sweat of his bondmen, is one in essence with the capitalist of Mr. Harrison's day who grows rich on the labor of his underpaid wagemen” (Howells). Howells goes on to say that the things written about King Arthur’s time are sadly just like his own time, which makes him burn with hate and shame. He points out that even though there might be some mistakes or wrong ideas about certain characters, readers could find many other references to a better idea of how things were in that age from other books. Since Twain wasn’t an Englishman, he didn’t have the same ideals as one and wasn’t compelled to keep Arthur who was all around good. Twain made him seem more human by giving him flaws. Although people of that time did not think that this book was one of Mark Twain’s best novels, it still survives today as a different view of King Arthur.
Usually, movies concerning Arthur are made with real people, although a few have made it into animation. Just after The Sword in the Stone in 1963, there was another animated movie in 1970 called A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. Because Walt Disney did not produce the 1970 film, and instead it was an Australian production, the film left its audience wanting something more on the animation side. In addition, it didn’t follow the book exactly--the movie A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court tweaked the story in several different places, perhaps to bring it up to modern standards.
Starting with the beginning of the film, a wrench falls on The Boss’s head rather than The Boss being hit over the head with a crowbar in a fight with a man called Hercules. When The Boss meets Clarence in the movie, he is a young boy; but as the years go by, Clarence doesn’t age like he should. Later in the book, King Arthur goes in disguise as a peasant with The Boss and experiences slavery, injustice, and “the working class,” but in the film there is little time where we see Arthur learning about his kingdom as a peasant. Because the movie is only seventy-five minutes long, the filmmaker could have easily added more to this part of the film to make it more like the book. When the knights come to rescue Arthur and The Boss from being hanged, the book has the knights riding up on bicycles and the film has them on motorcycles. Later on, after the tournament occurs between Sir Sagramore and The Boss, in the book all the knights charge him and The Boss ends up shooting them down. This does not occur in the film.
The battle scene in the book has The Boss holed up in a cave with rings of electrical fence, a dirt wall, and a ditch filled with water in front of the entrance. The film has the knights charging forward when a wall rises up from the ground blocking their horses from getting any closer. When the knights climb over the wall, huge waterspouts open up and water gushes out at them and they get washed away. In the book, King Arthur dies at the hand of Mordred, his son. In the movie, King Arthur does not die nor does he even get seriously wounded and sail to Avalon. At the end of the film, The Boss wakes up in a hospital and asks the nurse for an encyclopedia. He flips to the entry for "King Arthur" and sees a picture of Arthur leaning on a motorcycle. In the book, The Boss ends up dying after mumbling about his days in King Arthur’s time. These differences could quite possibly be because the filmmaker wanted to make it more family-friendly by not letting anyone die or by showing blood if a character got injured. Or, perhaps Zoran Janjic had a different view of how the story should be since he was Australian and didn’t grow up on the King Arthur legend, but he liked Mark Twain’s version the best and chose to just fine-tune it a bit.
To link the two stories together, the film had to retain some elements of Twain’s original narrative. Initially, there was the scene with the eclipse of the sun. The Boss was to be burned at the stake, but he told his captors he was a magician and he would eliminate the sun if they harmed him. This turned out for the best because it just so happened that there was an eclipse at the same time he was on the stake. He negotiated his way free but had to prove himself as a magician again. He chose to blow up Merlin’s tower by putting dynamite in the base and attaching a rod to the tip so that lightning hit it and demolished it. Everyone was in agreement after this second show that he was the greatest magician.
Next, the newspaper arrived on the scene. The Boss put together a newspaper for the citizens to read about the things going on in the realm. Since not very many people at that time could read, the newspaper was mostly for the high-born and students in the schools that The Boss created to teach people how to read. Another part that was in both the film and the book was the lovely character Sandy. Sandy, as The Boss called her, was quite the jabber box and filled The Boss’s ears with tales of anything and everything she might possibly know. The film produced a great likeness of her compared to the book. These scenes were kept close to the original because they showed the differences of living back in Arthur’s time, some of Twain’s humor by making Sandy talkative, and still made the movie family-friendly.
Overall, Mark Twain was ahead of his time in his wit and humor. Although he did not portray a “correct” version of King Arthur by that time’s standard, he clearly shined through with his brilliant rewriting of the classic King Arthur tale. He took a bold step by portraying Arthur the best king, but as a king who was more concerned with the matters going on in his court and the maidens who were distressed than the things going on in his realm. Through his vision of Arthur as a different sort of king and by including inventions from his time, Twain imprinted a vision that wasn’t soon to be forgotten. The 1970 movie version of his book, although different so as to make it family-friendly, still retains the humor and wit that was prevalent in the book. The assorted reviews of Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court didn’t deter it from becoming a movie a hundred years later.
* Unsigned. Daily Times. 13 Jan. 1890. London. 3 Dec. 2009. <http://etext.virginia.edu/railton/yankee/cylontel.html>.
Bibliography
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. Dir. Zoran Janjic. 1970. Videocassette.
Brown, Lori. “Artists of the Romantic Movement of the 19th Century.” Romantic Art. 31 Jan. 2008. Suite191.com. <http://weuropeanhistory.suite101.com/article.cfm/romantic_art>.
Clemens, Samuel Langhorne. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1982.
Harty, Kevin J. “Arthurian Film.” An Arthuriana/Camelot Project Bibliography. July 1997. 8 Dec. 2009. <http://www.library.rochester.edu/camelot/ACPBIBS/HARTY.HTM#yankee7>.
Howells, William Dean. “Howells Reviews Yankee.” Harper’s Magazine. Jan. 1890. 5 Dec. 2009. <http://etext.virginia.edu/railton/yankee/cylontel.html>.
Unsigned. Daily Times. 13 Jan. 1890. London. 3 Dec. 2009. <http://etext.virginia.edu/railton/yankee/cylontel.html>.
