The Stylistic Features Of Humor In Mark Twain’s The Innocents Abroad

Mark Twain has been acknowledged as a great literary giant of American literature since the 19 th century and the greatest American humorist of the age. Humor is inseparable from Mark Twain’s writing, especially his adventure and travel books.The Innocents Abroad is Twain’s first full-length narrative. To many readers The Innocents Abroad remains Twain’s second-best book, occupying a place in their affection behind The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. This travel book chronicles Twain’s pleasure cruise on board the charted vessel Quaker City through Europe and the Holy Land with a group of religious pilgrims. In the novel, Twain makes constant criticisms of various aspects of culture and society he meets on his journey and humorous observations of his fellow passengers’ innocent superiority. Twain’s hilarious satire is a double-edged weapon, impaling with sharp wit both the chauvinist and cosmopolitan.The novel is often explored as a travel narrative while humorous elements in the book are often not substantially interpreted. This thesis is intended to probe into stylistic features of humor and the functions they perform in the novel.The thesis is divided into four chapters. The Introduction, namely Chapter One, is a literature review on the author and his travel narratives, and an introduction to some theories essential to the argumentation of the thesis. The most common conceptualizations of humor, such as the Incongruity theory, the Superiority theory, etc., theories given by Henri Bergson and Avener Ziv are to lend theoretical support to the textual analysis.Chapter two analyzes linguistic humor in the novel, concentrating on the rhetorical techniques of humor, such as repetition, replacement, hyperbole and contrast. Readers can better understand the methods Mark Twain applies to create the humorous effect and observe Twain’s incisive commentary on the New Barbarians’ encounter with the Old World.Chapter three probes into situational humor. Through the analysis of various comic episodes, I will demonstrate traveling American innocents’ deep disappointment caused by the incongruity between mundane reality and glorified expectation and their Americanism. Chapter four discusses humor in characterization thus exploring how humor finds its expression in establishing a tension between Old Europe and the new American viewpoint and in deflecting the pretentiousness of the tourists and their innocent superiority.The analysis concludes that humor functions as a means of social integration, through which the innocent Americans construct their identity and a sense of solidarity. Besides, humor is wielded as a weapon by the innocents to revolt against the cruel reality they have encountered during the tour.