TWAIN-L Archives

Mark Twain Forum

TWAIN-L@YORKU.CA

Options: Use Classic View

Use Monospaced Font
Show HTML Part by Default
Condense Mail Headers

Topic: [<< First] [< Prev] [Next >] [Last >>]

Print Reply
Mime-Version: 1.0 (Mac OS X Mail 16.0 \(3696.100.31\))
Sender: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Mon, 1 Aug 2022 08:41:09 -0400
Reply-To: Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
Message-ID: <[log in to unmask]>
In-Reply-To: <[log in to unmask]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
From: "Daniel P. B. Smith" <[log in to unmask]>
Parts/Attachments: text/plain (6 lines)
In A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, the narrator says "But all of a sudden I stumbled on the very thing, just by luck. I knew that the only total eclipse of the sun in the first half of the sixth century occurred on the 21st of June, A.D. 528, O.S., and began at 3 minutes after 12 noon.”

When I read the book as a kid, I just took this at face value; and of course Mark Twain didn’t have any problems using unlikely coincidences in his other books. 

But since then I’ve always wondered: are we really supposed to believe this? Or was Mark Twain poking deadpan fun at unbelievable coincidences in literature?

ATOM RSS1 RSS2