American Humor in Mark Twains The Innocents Abroad开题报告

1. 研究目的与意义

Humor represents the arts of language in some aspects and has become an important part of our daily life. We enjoy communicating with humorous people and make friends with them. However, American humor is unique and totally different from the other humors such as British humor and Canadian humor. It originates from American history and develops with the culture. Mark Twain, as is known to us all, is good at American humor and we can find many interesting examples in nearly all of his books. As us students, we are more familiar with The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and not so familiar with The Innocents Abroad, but it is the best-selling of Mark Twain during his lifetime and makes him rise to fame, so this book is worth reading and deserves to be analyzed. This is why I want to do the research on American humor in Mark Twain#8217;s The Innocents Abroad.

2. 研究内容和预期目标

1. a brief introduction of american humor and the innocents abroad. this is the first part of the essay. this part may focus on the background of that time, the original and development of american humor and the introduction of mark twain.

2. the key is the rhetorical devices of american humor in the book. in this part, i will firstly briefly introduce some most regularly used rhetorical devices of american humor and focus on the book. i will pay more attention on antithesis, repetition and hyperbole to show the contrast and the comic effect.

3. some other stylistic features of the book and the important images of the european countries and people may be mentioned. there are many humorous events in france, italy and some other european countries to show the author''''s attitudes to them. and the people during the trip such as the artists and treasurers are also very interesting. i will focus on them in this part.

3. 国内外研究现状

Although The Innocents Abroad is the best-selling of Mark Twain during his lifetime and makes him rise to fame, it seems that scholars at home and abroad didn#8217;t pay enough attention to the book. Maybe their attention was focused on more famous books later such as The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County. Scholars at home mainly research on the stylistic features and image of different countries like French and other European countries in the book. However, American humor has been a research topic for scholars at home and abroad for a long time. At home, The studies of American humor mainly focus on the films and TV series and some typical novels. The Big Bang Theory and Friends and the novels of Mark Twain are all very popular choices. In foreign countries, there are also some theories about American humor such as Peter A.Yacavone#8217;s The Linguistic Pragmatics of American Humor, Dean Ruth A#8217;s Native American humor: implications for transcultural care, Anne Petersen#8217;s Cracking Up: American Humor in a Time of Conflict and so on.

4. 计划与进度安排

1.introduction

1.1introduction on american humor

1.2introduction on mark twain and the innocents abroad

5. 参考文献

[1] dean, william. my mark twain: reminiscences and criticism [m]. new york: harpersamp; brothers, 1910.

[2] jones, gavin. twain, language, and the southern humorists [a]. messent, peter. amp; budd, louis j. a companion to mark twain[c]. oxford: blackwell publishing company, 2005:110-115.

[3] michelson, bruce. mark twain the tourist: the form of the innocents abroad [j]. american literature, 1977(03): 385-398.

[4] perrottet, tony. the top six most influential travel books [j]. new oriental english, 2013 (11): 57-61.