Humor In The Legends In Colonial America

Humor is a vital element in American culture and American people are well-known for their strong sense of humor. It is of tremendous importance and necessity to search for the origin of American humor to better understand American culture. Historically, American tradition of humor traces back to the nation's very beginning---the colonial period, when the American people as well as their culture were taking shape. A large number of legends and tales that turned up in this period contributed enormously to the shaping and evolution of American humor. In the thesis, several types of legends are studied:the legends about pirates, Yankee and Yankee peddlers, backwoodsmen, and the legends concerning blacks and Indians.To systematically analyze the humorous figures and other elements in those legends, the author adopts Jung's archetypal theory, as well as three traditional humor theories:the incongruity theory, the superior theory and the relief theory. These theories work efficiently in the study of humor in various legends and in the exploration of causes of humor in colonial America.Humorous figures in colonial legends coincide with some of Jung's archetypes, for instance, the trickster, the hero, the demon, and the teased. The trickster archetype is demonstrated in many legends, such as the Stingy Jack in Irish legends, Yankee and Yankee peddlers, and various tricksters in Indian legends. The hero archetype is manifested by backwoodsmen. The demon archetype is related to the pirate, whose appearance is scary enough and demon-like.And finally the teased archetypes are connected with Indians and blacks.Humor in colonial America can be attributed properly to the social life in colonial days by means of colonial legends, which can be interpreted by Jung's archetypes:the persona and the shadow. A persona, or mask, varies in manifestation. A mask may be worn to meet the social demand and get a compromise between one's own desire and the society's expectation, for example, the deadpan mask of the Yankee, or to trick and manipulate others so as to obtain one's goal, for instance, the fiendish mask of the pirates, or to attempt to fulfill the dreams and hopes of folk people, e.g.,the idealized mask of the backwoodsmen. Shadow,on the other hand, is the dark side of personality and it consists of all the repressed and negative characteristics:sex instincts, desires, weaknesses, shortcomings, chaos, wildness, and even animal tendencies.These features show themselves collectively in form of varieties of tricksters, bringing to the surface an individual's negative aspects or the underside of a society's dominant values.Trickster legends serve as perfect vents for social pressure and best entrances to satisfying entertainment, bringing people close to the shadow and making them have a better understanding of themselves. Moreover, trickster legends help reinforce social rules and maintain social order. However, since shadow is often disowned and projected outward onto others and then labels them as "inferiorities", "enemies", "being exotic" and "being animal instinct-led", it is practically seen and experienced unfavorably. There were many colonial legends popular among the white people, by which they showed their racial attitude to Indians and blacks and considered them inferior.In a word, humor in colonial legends records American experience and aspiration in colonial life in the day and has a great impact upon American culture, especially upon American literature.Many American writers and poets,such as Franklin, Longfellow, Irving, and Edgar Allan Poe, have created their witty works by absorbing the legacy of colonial legends. A series of humorous characters in the colonial period have been appreciated and transformed to favorable images to meet the taste of the day, which now become the sources of aspiration and creation. What's more, American writers employ many strategies, such as exaggeration, hyperbole, satire and debasement, to achieve the expected humorous effect. These strategies trace their roots far back to humor in colonial legends.In addition, the local color of humor in colonial legends has also gained development in American literature, in which two major divisions of American humor, "Down East humor" and "Southwestern humor" are studied respectively in this thesis.