英语专业毕业论文-A Brief Study on Black Humor in Catch-22.doc

A Brief Study on Black Humor in Catch-22 Chapter I Introduction Catch-22 is the first and most important long novel of Joseph Heller. Since catch-22 was published in 1961 in America, it has always been a crucial part of modern literature. With the time passing, the novel has not been out of date. On the contrary, it attracts wide attentions around the world because of the novel’s theme, writing style and value. In China, an increasing number of scholars write books and essays to expound different aspects of the novel. Through detailed search and analysis, it was found that at present there are at least 130 academic papers about Catch-22 on the CDMD (Chinese Doctor and Master’s Database). Among all these papers, 48 papers focus on its theme and the author and 66 papers are concerned with its writing skills. Some others mainly study on the absurdity as well as other things related with Catch-22, for example, Wu Shaohui (2006) Free Choice in an Absurd World—An Interpretation of the Existentialism and Wang Yimei (2005) The Gradual Return to Self—A Tentative Analysis of Self-awareness in the 20th Century’s Western Modernist Literature. Besides, several papers are about characters of Catch-22 such as Wan Shihua (2006) The Black Figure Salon—Analysis of the Figures on Catch-22. Undoubtedly no matter what subjects the scholars study, theme, writing skill or others, it is inevitable for them to touch on the literature gene of this novel—black humor. This paper makes a tentative study on the relationship between black humor and Catch-22. From the perspective of black humor, the author of this paper is trying to make a detailed analysis on its main character, theme, structure and language aims to comprehensively display the deduction of black humor in Catch-22 and let the readers have a better understanding of this novel. Chapter II General Explanation of the Black Humor Black humor is credited to the Anthology of Black Humor, a 1939 French anthology of 45 writers edited