A Study Of Black Humor Elements In Allan Poe’s Humorous Short Stories

As a great poet, novelist and literary master in the 19 th American literature, Edgar Allan Poe created a great deal of poems, fictions in his short and ill-fated life which were well-known in world literature. The previous critics almost focused on Poe’s horror fiction and detective novel and neglected his humorous short stories which occupied an important part in Poe’s works. Though there have been some rare studies focusing on the uniqueness of Poe’s humorous short stories, his humorous short stories are still worthy of exploring from the content and structure. This thesis tries to analyze Poe’s humorous works based on his black humor elements, hoping to be helpful to Poe study.As a literary school, black humor flourished in America in the 60 s and 70 s of the 20 th century but as a kind of art of humor it has a deep histor y root. In Allan Poe’s works it had shown some traces of black humor as early as in the 19 th century. The study of Poe’s black humor elements in his humorous short stories can better reflect the rising and development of black humor as a writing technique.After introduction to the concept of black humor, this thesis analyzes the features, causes and significances of Poe’s black humor by employing the concept of black humor and its relevant theories. In conclusion, the plots and structures of Poe’s humorous short stories are bizarre and disordered and the protagonists are always anti-hero images; Poe has adopted some typical writing themes and techniques with black humor features. Personal experience, his poetics and social factor have resulted in Poe’s black humor. As a pioneer in his time, Poe’s black humor did not only influence his other novel creation, but also push the development of American humorous novel. Poe indeed has played an important role in the history of black humor novel development.