A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court: A Study of Social and Political Satire

An American writer and humorist; Mark Twain's work is characterized by broad irreverent humor with biting social or political satire. Twain's writing is known for its realism of voice, place and characters that speak to every generation as he exposes oppression and people's prejudice, hypocrisy and how ugly people can be while writing a brilliant story. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court was the last of Twain's novels written during the height of his career. The story satirizes oppression in Feudal England and shows Twain's more mature writing as it hints at some of the cynical and dark themes, he would obsess over in his final years. He thought it would be his last book, however he went on the write many more stories and novelettes. 

Twain developed an interest in the Arthurian principals, after a friend had given him an edition of the medieval Morte D'Arthur of Thomas Malory in 1884. "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" is widely known as a satire. Twain had written "The story isn't a satire at all peculiarly, it is more especially a contrast." After all, what would it satirize, a bygone legendary era whose characters may have never existed? Twain wrote in the preface, "The ungentle laws and customs touched upon in this tale are historical, but they are not necessary of the 6th Century or even necessarily about England." The scenes instead show pathos and injustices become generalized as the contradictions and faults of human behavior throughout the ages. It is contrasted against the modern man's view of himself and the enlightened age.