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1.2 The Previous Study of A Connecticut Yankee
Many scholars, both native and abroad, have done some studies on A Connecticut Yankee from various angels. In terms of the usage of the rhetoric, Juliette A. Trainor writes in her “Symbolism in a Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court” that many of the fictional characters in the novel are symbols with realistic incarnations. From the aspect of language, Thomas D. Zlatic points out in his “Language Technologies in A Connecticut Yankee” that the conflict in language between the Yankee and the knights actually represents a collision between literate mentality and oral mindset. Also putting emphasis on the language, Bao Haiqing has analyzed Twain’s several novels in her article in which she thinks the oral dialects and slangs used by Twain preserve entirely the true qualities of his humor and simplicity. Employing Freud’s psychological analysis, Fan Chuanfeng analyzes Twain’s humor concerning the reasons why it will make readers laugh naturally. Zhang Yumei compares the two kinds of humor in Twain’s early and later works and praises A Connecticut Yankee as a pioneer novel of black-humor.
However, Chinese scholars mostly study Twain’s humor in a very broad way but not specifically in the novel A Connecticut Yankee and western scholars mainly study its themes but rarely mention its correlation with Twain’s art of humor and satire. As a whole, few scholars, both domestic and abroad, have studied systematically and in depth Twain’s humor and satire in A Connecticut Yankee and their relevance to the themes, so there is still much room for further research in this area.
1.3 Research Design
In the following account, analysis of Twain’s art of humor and satire in A Connecticut Yankee will be made in detail by combining various critical approaches to literature such as the formalistic approach, the rhetorical approach, the historical-biographical approach and so on and also by quoting representative extracts from the novel as proofs. Since the New Critics have always treated “what the work says” and “how it says it” as inseparable issues (Guerin, 2010: 81), so in the first part, this paper endeavors to analyze how Twain uses his superb writing skills to achieve the effect of humor and satire and in the second part, this paper tries to illustrate what purposes Twain’s humor and satire intend to serve in order to express his thoughts and themes accurately. The two parts are inter-related as a whole, acting as a unity. By writing this thesis, the author wants to provide a thorough view of Twain’s writing skills in achieving the effect of humor and satire, to carve out a new angle in the study of the correlation between writing style and the themes of the novel and to fully reveal the realistic values of A Connecticut Yankee as well.
2. An Analysis of Twain’s Humor and Satire Embedded in Writing Skills
Humor has always been a key feature in Twain’s numerous stories. In his early works, the humor is rather frolicsome. However, due to social changes in America from 1870 and his personal predicaments, in Twain’s later works, this humor has changed to “a black and bitter one” (Leland, 2004: xiii) inseparable with strong satire and a sense of pessimism gradually takes prevalence. Written at the turning point of Twain’s writing career, A Connecticut Yankee is an important novel in which two kinds of humor, i.e. the light one and(relaxed) the dark one(satiric) are juxtaposed, which “weave together an extraordinary blend of compelling narrative, humorous observation, and perceptive understanding of the human condition”(Harold, 1986: 56). In A Connecticut Yankee, Twain has proved himself not to be a mere humorist but a moral one, with his humor and satire piled up by the bricks of his wonderful writing skills for the purpose of realistic criticism, just as Lydia points out: