"Mirth Is The Mail Of Anguish"

The thesis is an attempt to discuss the significance and functions of humor and black humor in Emily Dickinson's poetry. Many scholars regard Dickinson as a serious and tragic poet, and some of them used to think that humor is incompatible with the serious themes of her poetry. Famous critics like Aiken and Winters regarded her humor as "superficial" and "silly playfulness" that impaired the charms of her poetic art. Comedy was considered an inferior art form to tragedy for a long time since Aristotle, because people believed that comedy corrected individual vices based on the premise that the system of society was basically all right. Likewise, some critics held the same opinion about humor, and regarded Dickinson's humor as incompatible with her tragic vision and seriousness. However, Dickinson has been acknowledged as a precursor of modern poetry. The study of her humor is incomplete if we do not take into consideration her modernity and the modern interpretation of humor. In the modern time, humor is no longer directed towards the individual but society itself or even the position of human beings in the universe. Sypher suggests that the comic and the tragic are compatible with each other in the modern time. Comedy with a tragic vision better reveals the absurdity of life in the modern world and it is a higher art form than tragedy. Correspondingly, humor with a tragic vision is derived from a profound understanding of existence. The flourishing black humor literature in the 1960s is an epitome of modern humor with a tragic vision. Dickinson's poems also contain black humor that is an important aspect of her modern humor. The thesis is to apply relevant theories of humor and black humor to the textual analysis of Dickinson's poetry so as to find out what functions her humor and black humor perform in her poetry.Chapter 1 gives a brief introduction to the relevant studies of Dickinson's humor and the theories of humor. It also presents the research questions and thesis statement. Chapter 2 is an analysis of the functions of humor in Dickinson's poems with four major themes: society, religion and nature respectively. Her humor helps herto express her vision and her criticism of society. It is highly satirical and at the same time protective and therapeutic. Yet her humor is ambivalent, showing her uncertainty towards the absurdity of human existence, which is typical of black humor. Chapter 3 focuses on the functions of black humor in her poems about society, religion, nature and death. In these poems, she treats cruelty and pains in a humorous way, and provides the reader with a tragic vision of life and the world. Her black humor attacks absurdity with absurdity, and produces redemptive catharsis in the mind. In Chapter 4, a conclusion is drawn about Dickinson's humor and black humor, which have a lot to do with her modernity and which is derived from a profound understanding of the human situation and a great concern for human sufferings. Her humor and black humor perform the functions of criticizing society covertly and protecting herself from insanity. This conforms to her principle of "telling the truth slant". So, her humor and black humor have a significant role to play in her poetry rather than being silly playfulness that impairs the charm of her poetic art.