The Appreciation And Comparison Of Humor In Dickens' The Pickwick Papers And Lao She's Lao Zhang's Philosophy

Humor is a pervasive human phenomenon, observable in many spheres and aspects of life. Currently, many humor theorists have put supposed theories of humor embedded in contexts of physiology, psychology and sociology. However, these theories attempt to help people understand humor rather than solve the definition of humor. Humor is extensively studied from a variety of perspectives. This paper tries to analyze humor in literary works. Many great writers like Chaucer, Cervantes, Swift, Mark Twain and Shakespeare display gift of humor in their works. Seen from the relationship between humor and literature, there are many aspects worth researching from different perspectives.The traditional methods of investigating humor in literature works usually focus on the techniques like mimicry, exaggeration, reversal, mockery, punning, nicknaming, proverbs, riddles and verbal games.This paper attempts to appreciate and compare Dickens'and Lao She'humor in regard to their respective novels: The Pickwick Papers and Lao Zhang's Philosophy from new perspectives.It is well known that Dickens and Lao She are great humorists in literary field. Although they lived in different times and had different up-brings and life experiences, they shared one distinctive feature in their creation: humor.Dickens is a great British novelist and humorist. He enjoys a reputation all over the world. Since the Chinese version of David Copperfield by Lin Zhu appeared, he has been more and more popular with Chinese. Nowadays, Dickens'reputation in the academic field continues to rise.1 As a great humorist whose optimistic spirit has influenced Britain for a long time, his humor is less researched from new perspectives compared with other aspects.Lao She is regarded as a great humorist as well. He enjoys a reputation all over the world. When he stayed in Britain, he admitted that he was greatly influenced by Dickens.This paper is a tentative comparison and appreciation of humor in Dickens'The Pickwick Papers and Lao She's Lao Zhang's Philosophy, trying to find their similarities and dissimilarities, discussing mechanism of humor hidden behind their works, and attempting to provide some new perspectives of aesthetic standards of humor. Sociological, psychoanalytic and linguistic approaches are tried in this paper.The tentative research consists of four chapters: it begins with a general view of humor. Chapter Two offers an introduction to Dickens and Lao She as well as the influences on their writing; Chapter Three aims to analyze two novels with two different approaches: narrative approach and linguistic approach, combined with some traditional theories and psychoanalytical methods. Chapter Four attempts to investigate the motivation of applying humor in literature works. And it draws a conclusion that humor is an attitude toward life,and a way of dream-realization and self- realization.To sum up, this paper tries to appreciate and compare humor in The Pickwick Papers and Lao Zhang's Philosophy mainly from new perspectives, providing readers with new approaches to understand humor better. Besides, from the comparison of these two novels, readers may obtain some constructive enlightenment on how to preserve one's own culture while learning from foreign culture at the same time, which helps to make a national culture integrate into world culture. Finally, from the social and personal functions of humor and as a kind of attitude toward life, readers may get some knowledge of handling pressure in life.