Black Humor in Modern Western Literature

1, black humor is a modernist novel genre popular in the United States in the 1960s, named after a collection of black humor compiled by American writer Friedman.

2. Black humor is a literary method to express tragic content in the form of comedy. Black refers to the terrible and funny objective reality, and humor refers to the mocking attitude of a purposeful and willed personality towards this reality. When humor is added with black, it becomes a kind of humor that shows despair. Western critics call it humor under the gallows.

3. The artistic features of black humor:

It is a kind of humor in distress situation, a mixture of tragic content and comedy form, which shows the absurdity of the world, the alienation of society to people, the confusion after the rational principle is shattered, and the futility of self-struggle. In the face of all this, people cynically distance themselves from reality with a humorous attitude towards life, so as to safeguard the dignity of the devastated people, that is, the so-called black humor.

Anti-hero: The spiritual world of characters tends to split and become an anti-hero with both tragic and comic colors. Their absurd words and deeds allude to social reality and express the author's views on social problems.

The narrative structure method of anti-fiction: it expresses the chaotic plot through hints, comparisons and symbols. Breaking the rational time sequence, the rhythm jumps faster, and the plot lacks logical connection. It often mixes narrative real life with fantasy memories, and serious philosophy with gag. The brushwork is full of irony, and language often breaks the general grammatical rules and the inherent collocation habits of words.

This is moral.

4. American Heller is considered as a banner of black humor. Vonnegut, Pynchon, Bath, donald barthelme, French Vian. 1, Heller, USA: Catch-22.

2. vonnegut: his masterpiece Slaughterhouse Five and Cat's Cradle (1963, Bockonon, Mike Cats).

3, Pynchon:' Rainbow of Gravity'