康州美国佬在亚瑟王朝 (1889)

《康州美国佬大闹亚瑟王朝》（英语：A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court），又译为《康州美国佬在亚瑟王朝》、《康州美国佬奇遇记》，是美国作家马克·吐温在1889年所发表的一部长篇小说。

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court is an 1889 historical novel by American humorist and writer Mark Twain. The book was originally titled A Yankee in King Arthur's Court. Some early editions are titled A Yankee at the Court of King Arthur.

In the book, a Yankee engineer from Connecticut named Hank Morgan receives a severe blow to the head and is somehow transported in time and space to England during the reign of King Arthur. After some initial confusion and his capture by one of Arthur's knights, Hank realizes that he is actually in the past, and he uses his knowledge to make people believe that he is a powerful magician. He becomes a rival of Merlin, who appears to be little more than a fraud, and gains the trust of King Arthur. Hank attempts to modernize the past in order to make people's lives better. Hank is disgusted by how the Barons treat the commoners and tries to implement democratic reforms, but in the end, he is unable to prevent the death of Arthur. Hank declares England a republic, but the Catholic Church, growing fearful of his wealth and power, issues an interdict against him.

Twain wrote the book as a burlesque of Romantic notions of chivalry after being inspired by a dream in which he was a knight himself, severely inconvenienced by the weight and cumbersome nature of his armor. It is a satire of feudalism and monarchy that also celebrates homespun ingenuity and democratic values while questioning the for-profit ideals of capitalism and outcomes of the Industrial Revolution. Twain strongly praises the French Revolution, defending the Reign of Terror as a minor problem compared to the monarchy. It is among several works by Twain and his contemporaries that mark the transition from the Gilded Age to the Progressive Era of socioeconomic discourse. It is often cited as a formative example of the fledgling time travel genre.

Plot

Hank Morgan, a 19th-century resident of East Hartford, Connecticut, after a blow to the head, awakens to find himself inexplicably transported back in time to early medieval England, where he meets King Arthur.

Many passages are quoted directly from Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur, a late medieval collection of Arthurian legends that constitutes one of the main sources on the myth of King Arthur and Camelot. The frame narrator is a 19th-century man (ostensibly Mark Twain himself) who meets Hank Morgan in modern times and begins reading Hank's book in the museum in which they meet. Later, characters in the story retell parts of it in Malory's original language. A chapter on medieval hermits also draws from the work of William Edward Hartpole Lecky.

Introduction to the "stranger"

The story begins as a first-person narrative in Warwick Castle, where a man details his recollection of a tale told to him by an "interested stranger" personified as a knight through his simple language and familiarity with ancient armor.

After a brief tale of Sir Lancelot of Camelot and his role in slaying two giants from the third-person narrative, taken directly from Le Morte d'Arthur, Hank Morgan enters and is persuaded to reveal more of his story. Hank is a superintendent because of his proficiency in firearms manufacturing, with 2,000 subordinates. During a disagreement with his subordinates, he sustains a head injury when a man named "Hercules" hits him with a crowbar.

Hank wakes up underneath an oak tree, having no idea how he got there. Hank soon encounters the knight Sir Kay. Kay challenges him to a joust, which is quickly lost by the unarmed, unarmored Hank as he scuttles up a tree. Kay captures Hank and leads him towards Camelot Castle. Upon recognizing that he has traveled back to the 6th century, Hank realizes that he is the de facto smartest person on Earth and that with his knowledge, he should soon be running things.