The Authority of the Spoken Word: Speech Acts in Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

Abstract

In the following consideration of the Connecticut Yankee's triple-barreled verbal power I will be using the terms "speech act," "locution," "illocution," and "perlocution" as they are defined in Austin's How To Do Things with Words (1962) and further developed by John R. Searle in Speech Acts (1969). I will first give attention to a scene in which Hank is saved by an opportune eclipse (it comes just in time to save him from being burned at the stake), then move on to his restoration of the fountain of the Valley of Holiness, to the rescue of Morgan and the king by Sir Launcelot and his bicycle brigade, and finally to a concluding account of the defeat of ten thousand armored knights by Morgan and his "boys."//

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