Try of higher and secondary specialized education of the republic of uzbekistan jizzakh state pedagogical institute

Humor in American Realism

Satire

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  Works of satire are written in a humorous way to point out a flaw in society or a particular person.
  
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  American humor blossomed during the realist period, as evidenced by writers such as Mark Twain and Charles Farrar Browne.
  
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  Many characteristics of their writing, including using ordinary characters and writing in the vernacular, or common language, were also characteristics of realist writing as a whole.
  
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    Twain wrote stories and novels satirizing racial relations, various British customs, and class differences in the 1800s.
  

Hyperbole

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  One technique many humorists employ is hyperbole, a rhetorical device that exaggerates facts and details. Writers use hyperbole to emphasize a point or to add humor based on the absurdity or irrationality of the idea being exaggerated. 
  
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  Consider the previous example from Browne's “Interview with President Lincoln.” Where does it contain hyperbole?
  
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  I should move heving and arth—so to speak—until I got orfice [office] . . . 
  
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  "Move heving and arth," or moving heaven and earth, is a hyperbole meaning that the speaker will try anything to accomplish his task.
  
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  Which sentences in this excerpt from Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn use hyperbole?
  
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  He listened some more; then he come tiptoeing down and stood right between us; we could a touched him, nearly.
  
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  Well, likely it was minutes and minutes that there warn't a sound, and we all there so close together.
  
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  There was a place on my ankle that got to itching, but I dasn't scratch it; and then my ear begun to itch; and next my back, right between my shoulders.
  
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  Seemed like I'd die if I couldn't scratch.
  
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  Well, I've noticed that thing plenty times since. If you are with the quality, or at a funeral, or trying to go to sleep when you ain't sleepy—if you are anywheres where it won't do for you to scratch, why you will itch all over in upwards of a thousand places.
  
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  Pretty soon Jim says: "Say, who is you? Whar is you? Dog my cats ef I didn' hear sumf'n. Well, I know what I's gwyne to do: I's gwyne to set down here and listen tell I hears it agin." Gray, Richard. A History of American Literature. Malden: Blackwell, 2004.
  

Assignment

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  Read Mark Twain’s “The £1,000,000 Bank-Note.”
  
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  Complete slides 17 and 18 on Unit 3 Humor in American Realism and submit answers.
  
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