The Art Of Irony In Joseph Heller's Catch-22

Joseph Heller is a classic novelist of Black Humor, his first novel catch-22 lead a new literature genre—Black Humor, which causes the post-modernism novel in American.We take the point that the reason for catch-22's great achievement is result from its particular irony art. Heller shows the absurd western world with irony art in this book. He makes use of understatement to deal with suddenness and disaster, treats the abnormal as the normal, and makes the miraculous become fair and reasonable. Through the so-called illogical matters and language, he indicates absurd which contains the real logic. He also blends the tragicomedy factors, which add up to form a great tension. So we can conclude that the irony art is the most important character of catch-22.However, the irony art of Heller's work has not been adequately researched in our country, and it lacks profound systematization. This thesis combines the Chinese and foreign ironical theory of the literature theory, basing on the ironical rhetoric theory. What we want to do is to analyze catch-22 text in detail and to fully research Heller's ironical art. We wish what we have done could be useful for Heller's research, for black humor's and post-modernism novel's research. We still wish our work is significative both for theory and practice.Firstly, we analyze the verbal irony and the situation irony of catch-22. Secondly, we explain its deep meaning—esthetics value and spiritual dependence. At last, we conclude that the irony is the most important character of this novel, and it is also the basic cause of why catch-22 could be the representative of Black Humor.There are six parts:Introduction: The introduction includes general descriptions of Heller's lifetime and his novel Catch-22. It also offers the general data about the current study on this novel both at home and aboard, and the statements about the achievements and problems in present study. At last, it indicates that the focus and studying methods of this thesis are the ironical art of catch—22.Part one: The changes of connotation of irony in history and the basic meaning of literary irony. This part briefly traces back the historic progress of irony connotation at the beginning. Traditional Irony is predominantly an admixture of ideas from Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, and Quintilian. It mainly refers to the comparison of the surface meaning to the underlying meaning. As a way of saving the soul of human beings, Schlegel's Romantic Irony has a metaphysical significance. For theorists of New Criticism, irony is a general structural principle of poems. It is concluded that literary irony is a technique of literary expression with a kind of implication of taunting and denying as well as nature of disclosing in accordance of the pressure of context, while the author tries to maintain the balance of these complex contradiction elements after he sees through the paradox of the world.Part two: The verbal irony of catch-22. This part places special emphasis on understatement and overstatement as well as paradoxical statement. Meanwhile, it discusses the application of those irony skills in catch-22.Part three: The situation irony of catch-22. This chapter analyzes the application of the situation irony on the basis of this novel in three paradigms: the difference between the plot result and reader's anticipation, the arrangement's contradiction of plot, the parody of classical plot.Part four: The aesthetic feature of irony in catch-22. Irony is a way of literary expression as well as an ideology and view of life. In this chapter, the aesthetic value of the art of irony is discussed through two aspects: absurd, Black Humor.Conclusion: After concluding the whole thesis, we indicate that the outstanding feature of catch-22 consists in the perfect integration of the absurd opinion and the unique irony art. At last, we point out the problems of this thesis, and bring forward our advice for the future.