The Readers Review: Literature from 1714 to 1910 discussion

We're almost done... week 5. Just one more week to go.

There were several incidents in this novel where Twain created suspense. I was impressed with how well he achieved this. Did anyone else find this to be the case? Can you name a specific example?

First let me admit ignorance about the 6th century England. I have not studied or read much about this time in history, but I keep wondering how accurate MT's descriptions are. I am left with the impression that he is creating a straw man that he can poke fun at.

For example, Hank cannot get the people to grasp the concept of inflation no matter how hard he tries. In real life someone would grasp this.

Then they are taken as slaves. What do we know about slavery? Is MT describing slavery as practiced in America or according to what we know about slavery in the early Middle Ages?

There are a lot of anachronisms here. For instance, these people would not have understood English at all. They spoke Anglo-Saxon, like in Beowulf which came 300 years later. Most of what Twain does here is based upon the middle ages, about 800 years after this is set.

"A major goal of MT's novel, as the work of a writer who thinks of himself as both a democrat and a realist, is to use Hank's "unpoetic" observations of Arthurian England to undo the spell he felt 19th-century medievalism had cast over Europe's aristocratic past." http://twain.lib.virginia.edu/yankee/...