On The Black Humor And Theme Construction In Miguel Street

V.S.Naipaul is one of the most prominent immigrant writers in the contemporary world of literature and the winner of the Nobel Prize for literature in 2001.In his over half-a-century-long writing career,he has produced more than 30 brilliant works,including fictions,travel notes,essays and letters.Miguel Street,a collection of 17 close-linked short stories,is Naipaul's first book-length work.Set in Port of Spain,Trinidad during the Second World War,it vividly depicts the lives of the underclass colonials in the impoverished Miguel Street.Studies at home and abroad on Miguel Street mainly concentrate on post-colonialism,narrative strategy and marginality of it,but few scholars have ever studied this work from the perspective of black humor.Actually,black humor elements are infiltrated in every aspect of this collection,whether in plot,characterization or narrative techniques.Combined with the artistic features of black humor and the specific social and historical background,this thesis explores how the black humor contributes to the theme construction in Miguel Street.In other words,how certain black humor techniques are employed to express the themes.The thesis is divided into six parts.Introduction mainly provides some basic information about the author V.S.Naipaul and his work Miguel Street,the current research at home and abroad,as well as the argument and significance of this thesis.Chapter One sets forth black humor from the following respects: the origin,the definitions and the main features of it.Chapter Two analyzes how black humor techniques are employed to show the absurdity of the colonial society from the educational,political and religious aspects,revealing the absurd,chaotic and unreasonable situation of colonial society.Chapter Three explores the subversion of patriarchy and traditional love of the work.It also discusses how certain black humor techniques are adopted to highlight the subversion theme.Chapter Four is designed to manifest the survival predicament of underclass colonials through the exposure of their material,spiritual and cultural identity crisis.Moreover,it explores how the black humor techniques serve the survival predicament theme.Conclusion tries to summarize and restate the views of the thesis.