Humor In Sunshine Sketches Of A Little Town And The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn

This thesis attempts to investigate the humor in two novels, Sunshine Sketches of aLittle Town by a Canadian writer Stephen Leacock and The Adventures of HuckleberryFinn by an American writer Mark Twain. Stephen Leacock and Mark Twain areillustrious humorists in the English-speaking world. As far as humor is concerned, thethesis will look at both novels in terms of their similarities and differences to discoverwhich is more important and why. It will show that as members of the same literaryschool of Realism, their similarities are obvious, both of them having a good commandof characterization, situation and reproduction of local culture in the perspective ofhumor. However, what is more important, the differences are manifested in their worksin aspects of different definitions of humor, stress of different social senses andlanguage styles. This paper throws light on the dialectical relationship betweensimilarities and differences and will conclude that in defining the relationship betweenLeacock and Twain as renowned humorists, the similarities which come from the realistemphasis on writing about their local life, are less important than the differences whicharise out of the social conditions under which the two authors live. It can be seen that allthese differences arise out of the conviction that a good work always reflect the writer'sindividual conscience.