Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman
For me, Mark Twain is the
most humorous humorist that ever wrote humor.
I think part of the reason
that he's humorous is that he constructs a plot that provides a sense
of progress and a series of burlesques unified through character,
setting, and situation. Often, the titles of his books themselves
identify or suggest the conceit: A Connecticut Yankee in King
Arthur's Court, Life on
the Mississippi, A Tramp Abroad.
For
example, the idea for A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's
Court (traveling back in time to
set up a continuous contrast between the medieval and the modern)
establishes the basis for sustained, continuous humor, satire,
parody, and burlesque.
In
addition (Twain usually progresses from general to specific), the
chapters themselves of his novels suggest the same structure and the
same elements: “Camelot,” “King Arthur's Court,” “Knights
of the Round Table” . . . “The Eclipse,” “Merlin's Tower,”
. . . “The Tournament” . . . .
Internally,
each chapter is also structured:
Chapter
I (Camelot): the countryside is described; a girl appears; the
protagonist approaches the town; a detailed description of the town
and several of its residents is presented; Chapter II (King Arthur's
Court): The protagonist exchanges dialogue with an old man; the
protagonist exchanges dialogue with a page; the protagonist and the
page arrive at Sir Kay's castle; the narrator presents a
philosophical conclusion (i. e., one of the novel's themes).
This
threefold structure indicates, with increasing specificity, the sense
of progress, which unifies the story while introducing topics for
humor. By the time readers finish the story, the foibles of the
novel's characters and the folly of their times (and their view of
the world) will have been thoroughly examined, criticized, and
lampooned.
In
the actual paragraphs of the story, Twain uses many devices to spoof
the targets of his humor, including mistaking Camelot for an
“asylum”; similes (“as lonesome as Sundays,” “made him look
like a forked carrot”); incongruous diction (“”her own merits
in . . . respect” to being “a spectacle”); derisive adjectives
(“windowless,” “wilderness of thatched cabins,” “crooked
alleys,” “unpaved,” “troops of dogs and nude children,”
“reeking wallow”); contrast (“a noble cavalcade . . . glorious”
vs. “the muck and swine and naked brats”); evaluation (the old
man's use of Middle English confirms his status, in the protagonist's
eyes, as an inmate of the 'asylum”); personification (“comfort
his very liver,” “let that shudder its way home”); metaphor
(“he was pretty enough to frame”); incongruous description
(“shrimp-colored tights”); and a play on words (“”he informed
me he was a page,” but, the narrator says, “you ain't more than a
paragraph”).
Twain's
technique could be used to set up a variety of other opportunities
for humor through such contrasts and conflicts between opposing types
of characters:
- A genius among fools
- Hercules among the Amazons
- The experiences that occasion various proverbs
- A sane man on a ship of fools
