Frontier Humor In The Best Short Stories Of Bret Harte

Bret Harte is a prominent American Western short story writer, renowned for his refreshing frontier humor infused in enriching Californian literature.Frontier humor, a unique type of American humor, is full of vigor and vitality. The frontier humor employed in The Best Short Stories of Bret Harte (hereafter BSSBH) helps to deepen the thematic understanding of Harte's works.In addition to the Introduction and Conclusion, the thesis is laid out in three chapters. The first chapter interprets three crucial components of frontier humor, namely, tall tale, tricksterism and physical humor, which are lively and full of frontier smack. The second chapter explores the features of Harte's frontier humor. First, the particular locality endows the frontier humor with the incongruous nature, which is not tuneful to the tradition; second, the male-dominated frontier adds masculine aura to frontier humor; and lastly, the influence of local color movement encourages the vernacular authenticity which permeates in Harte's frontier humor. The third chapter particularly dwells on the functions of frontier humor. On the one hand, frontier humor serves to release the psychological tension generated by the competitive frontier environment; on the other hand, it helps to mitigate characters' moral responsibility along with the use of sentimentality. Besides this, the thesis reckons that frontier humor can be employed to disclose the hypocritical social norms. The third function is commonly held as the serious root of humor.By analyzing BSSBH from the perspective of frontier humor, the thesis attempts to elaborate the contribution of frontier humor to American literary history. To fully understand the profundity of Harte's works, readers must be capable of observing the adoption of frontier humor in his works as well as the experimentation of his language and style he uses to achieve this profundity.