重庆大学本科学生课程论文简析马克吐温在《汤姆索亚历险记》中的幽默技巧

1、重庆大学本科学生课程论文简析马克吐温在汤姆索亚历险记中的幽默技巧学 生 : 谭桥指导教师：杨宇班 级： 003重庆大学二O一三年十二月Course Essay of Chongqing UniversityAn Analysis of Mark Twain s Humor in The Adventures of Tom SawyerClass: 003Student: Tan QiaoSupervisor: Yang YuChongqing UniversityDecember, 2013Table of Contents1 Introduction12 Use of colloquiali

2、sm 13 Use of figures of speech 24 Conclusion 4References 4IntroductionMost of Mark Twain s works are directed against the American society.He is good at using extreme technique, enlarge the ugly phenomenon to the readers, let them find out what is right, what iswrong bythemselves. For this reason, M

3、ark Twain has a lot of audiences in the whole world. His works have practical significances, deserving to analyze. his thesis uses several points to expound Mark Twain s humoris remarkable, it is fun to read Twain at first, for most of his works then to be funny, obtaining some practical jokes, comi

4、c details, witty remarks and so on, and some of them are actually tall tales. Today, most of the authors Twain s humorous style as the main technique in their literary works, because it is the best weapon to attack the darkness, could show the author s ideas better than any other ways.The thesis con

5、sists of two parts. The first part of the body is a detailed analysis to the use of colloquial language. The next part specifically states writing techniques inThe Adventure of Tom Sawyer.2 Use of colloquialismWhatever Mark Twain writes is pretty sure of an eager popular recognition. And it is due t

6、o him to say that he finds his readers and admirers all around the world. His application of colloquial language to his word bestowed him the most powerful weapon to win him the outstanding status in history of literature.A factor that made Mark Twain unique is his magic power with language, his use

7、 of colloquial language. At that time, Mark Twain adopts theAmerican colloquial languages, hammering it into shape again and again.His words are vivid, concrete and direct in effect, and his sentence structures are simple, even ungrammatical, which is typical of the spoken language. And Mark Twain s

8、killfully used the colloquialism tocast his protagonist s in their everyday life.Whatmore, hischaracters, confined to a particular region and to a particular historical moment, speak with a strong accent, which is true of his local colorism. Besides, different characters from different literaryor cu

9、ltural backgrounds talk differently, as is the case with Tom. Indeed, with his great master and effective use of vernacular, MarkTwain has made colloquial speech an accepted, respectable literary medium in the literary history of the country. His style of languagewas later taken up by his descendant

10、s, Sherwood Anderson and Ernest Hemingway and influenced generations of letters.Colloquial language also gives a face to American writing, distinguishing it from writing in other parts of the world. It showsthe rural, uneducated portion of America. These is an example fromTheAdventure of Tom Sawyer

11、:“ Look at him, Jim! He's a -going up there.Say-look! He's a-going to shake hands with him."(Twain, 1996, P.28)This shows how they are uneducated, because of the sloppy sentence structure, and it hints at the fact of them being rural by showing a point of view from the poor, which is we

12、lcome to those who are tired of hearing about the glamour of rich people.3 Use of figures of speechTwain is also a master of figurative techniques. He applied severalfigurative techniques in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer such as metaphor, transferredepithet andso onto provide emphasis,freshnessofexpr

13、ession,or clarity.Twain'sprofusionof languageenrichedthereader's effect of vivid scenes.Metaphor is the most common seen figure of speech in writings. It directly reflected the concept of human beings and human's subjective reaction to the outside world. The essence of metaphor is to und

14、erstandone things on the basis of another thing. Authors often apply metaphor in their writings to create humorous and ironic effects.Twain'smetaphoric construction over his complete career and especially sheds new light on his central texts."Old Scratch" in "He's full of the

15、Old Scratch"(Twain, 1996, P.2) refers to devil. "In high feather "in" To which Tom responded with jeers, and started off in high feather" (Twain, 1996, P.8) means "in high spirit". Here "feather" is compared as one's spirit.Transferred epithet is a fi

16、gure of speech where an epithet is transferred from the noun it should rightly modify to another to which it does not really apply or belong. The using of transferred epithet is also an important writing feature of Mark Twain. Twain introduced it in his work The Adventure of Tom Sawyer to strengthen

17、 the power of his language and much more vivid figures to the reader for a special artistic effect. In The Adventure of Tom Sawyer , the readers can find many words and phrases that vividly expressed transferred epithet which Twain applied in the work.For instance, "relieving snort "in&quo

18、t; The strangling hero sprang up with a relieving snort" (Twain, 1996, P.21) means that Tom snorted in order to relieve himself. Snort itself cannot make any effect of relieving people, but the epithet "relieving" is transferred to modify "snort".Metonymy is also a very popu

19、lar writing technique applied by authors to illustrate their work. Usually the author would apply the most remarkable feature of the thing as the referent of it so that it would turn out to be a very artistic "exchange". The readers could easily found this writing technique in The Adventur

20、es of Tom Sawyer . In this novel, there are also a lot of examples.Mental stomach" in "Tom's mental stomach had never really hungered for one of those prizes." (Twain, 1996, P.26) meaning in one's mind is the first example. Here "mind" is substituted by "one'

21、;s stomach in a body" in the sentence.3 ConclusionAs one of America's first and foremost realists and humorists, Mark Twain usually wrote about his own personal experiences and things he knew about from firsthand experience. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is one of Twain's best books beca

22、use, for whatever reasons, he brought together into it, with the highest degree of artistic balance, those most fundamental dualities running through his work and life from start to finish. Most of all it has to do with the structure of the sentence, which is simple,directand fluent, maintainingthe rhythm of theword's group of speech and the intonations of the speaking voice. MarkTwain's colloquial stylehas influenced a large number of Americanwriters. Twain depicted mostly the lower class of society. Meanwhile, local color mixed romantic plots with realistic descript