Humor And Music In Seraph On The Suwanee

This thesis attempts to explore the stylistic features of humor and music as well as their functions in Zora Neale Hurston’s novel Seraph on the Suwanee(1948), intends to uncover how the author employs such stylistic features to convey her cultural stance.Best known for her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, Hurston is an active member in Harlem Renaissance and a distinguished female figure in African American literature whose works are characterized by humor, representations of dialects and folkways, which has a great influence on African American writers such as Alice Walker.Despite the tremendous authoritative voices on Their Eyes, Seraph on the Suwanee, her last published novel that has white protagonists, has attracted much less scholarly attention, among which most interpret it from the perspectives of feminism and race. Misread by some critics as a soap opera pandering to white readers, Seraph is in fact a masterpiece worthy of in-depth study, which continues Hurston’s tradition of resolving conflicts with humor and demonstrates her ideas of cultural influence and fusion by employing black music as a cultural symbol.The thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter One is an introduction to Zora Neale Hurston and her novel Seraph on the Suwanee, literature review, theoretical basis, research questions and analysis procedures. Chapter Two analyzes how Hurston highlights the importance of humor through describing the negative effects of an absence of humor. Chapter Three centers on humor concerning the male protagonist, aiming to illustrate the positive influences of humor on interpersonal and cross-racial fellowship. Chapter Four dissects how black music, especially jazz, functions as a bond between the whites and the blacks. The last chapter concludes that both humor and black music help to break down barriers between people of different backgrounds in Seraph, thus conveying Hurston’s dream of constructing social equality in the United States.