Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee: Reconsiderations and Revisions

Abstract

Awhole century after the publication of A Connecticut Yankee EXi Win King Arthur's Court literary scholarship is still trying to establish the sources and the circumstances of composition of Mark Twain's most complex novel in order to advance the understanding of both the text and the intellectual impulses and emotional tensions that caused and attended its writing. In a recent article David Ketterer has reopened the discussion of Max Adeler's The Fortunate Island, a short story which never had figured prominently in studies of the genesis of the novel and eventually had ceased altogether to be considered as either an early inspiration for, or a more direct source of, Mark Twain's novel.1 Not only does he offer external and internal evidence for Mark Twain's indebtedness to the story in question; he also presents a minute analysis of Mark Twain's response to Adeler's charge of plagiarism, which in itself contributes to our understanding of the author's attitude toward his novel and his craft. Still, Ketterer's conclusions necessarily remain somewhat speculative since he was obliged to reconstruct the details of the charge from what he considers to be an evasive reply by