A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
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- USD 14.99
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- USD 14.99
Descripción editorial
Seymour Chwast, an icon of the graphic design world, has delighted audiences with his adaptations of The Divine Comedy, The Canterbury Tales, and The Odyssey, but it is in Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court that he has found his match. Inspired by Twain's comic irreverence for the Knights of the Round Table, Chwast's illustrations showcase his humor at its finest. He brings us a brilliant imagining of the beloved hero, Hank Morgan, as well as the full cast of Camelot characters, from Merlin to Lancelot to the king himself. With a bold and colorful design and no shortage of witty surprises, this is Mark Twain as you've never seen him before.
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Adapting Twain is a dangerous thing: too often the old master's pretend-ramshackle style and tall-tale sensibility gets taken straight, no chaser. Fortunately, Chwast (who previously adapted The Divine Comedy and The Odyssey ) brings just the right puckish tone to Twain's comedy. Hank Morgan, a 19th-century jack-of-all-trades, is mysteriously transported to 6th century England. Instead of being impressed by the Arthurian pomp and ceremony, the efficiency-minded Protestant Yankee is offended by the superstition, filth, cruelty, and antidemocratic oppression. As the "stranger in a strange England" sets about modernizing the place, forces of reaction (Merlin the magician, the church, knights who don't like his turning them into advertising billboards) rise up. It's a tale told more briskly than in the original, with great blocks of plot and background sliced out. But Chwast's squiggly art, flattened perspectives, and purposeful misspellings bring a curiously innocent and childlike perspective to this complex satire, which, if anything, further highlights Twain's dark view of human progress.
