暗刺：《出了毛病》The Thorn: Something Happened开题报告

1. 研究目的与意义（文献综述）

joseph heller is an important writer of american black humor. his second masterpiece something happened written in 1974 was representative of this genre. just like joseph heller said, catch-22is allabout the external world he knows while something happenedis about all the internal mind space he feels. the story described the desperate inner world of a rich middle-class man by his monologue. sense of black humor can be found between the lines, in the structure, even in reading experience, for readers can resonate with the thoughts of the protagonist, and for every time readers found the joke that could drain the passive feelings, the writer designed a plot to shut it down. joseph heller is the first major american writer to deal with unrelieved misery at novel length. even more rashly, he leaves his major character essentially unchanged at the end. the books are full of excellent jokes, but neither one is funny. taken together, they tell a tale of pain and disappointments experienced by mediocre men of good will.

going through the academic spots of black humor, over half of them put the focus on tv series and movies. retrieving back to the origin of black humor, novel is where this genre reached its peak. comparing to catch-22,something happenedreceived rather few academic focus, however, regarding to the peace time we are living, sense of spiritual crisis and loss of faith has more contemporary significance. life is a whole lot smaller and cheaper in this second book, as desperation instead of full metal jacket bullets came out to be the reaper, life has shrunk to the size of a grave, almost.one thing should be mentioned that when the book just came out, there were controversies: some criticize the novel; naming the book a “sick book”, for it’s all about a man’s boring and negative monologue. however, it is those structures, flawed people, and raw mental space that joke on the social alienation of america after the war in 1960s.

researches had taken places analyzing the theories bound with black humor in literary perspective. for example, the existentialism in black humorwritten by wangzhuo, american black humor novel and existentialism(2001), the comparison of freud philosophy theories between black humorwritten by li jie, the splendid parody of freudianism(2007),the post-modern interpret of black humor, written by yue zhu, the research of post-modern artistic techniques of joseph heller’s novels(2015).some scholars also politically appreciate the black humor in something happenedas critics of capitalism. schulz max proposed that it is war and nuclear; rubin d louis jr. thought that it means the denial of morale and other human behavior criteria; pratt allan defines it as the sense of crisis on ontology. no matter how discrepancy appears, absurdity is admittedly one of the eternal focuses of black humor.

2. 研究的基本内容与方案

contents:

1.social background of the novel

2.description of what is black humor

3. 研究计划与安排

before 4th january :settlement of the title

before 6thmarch: submission of the outline

before 30thapril :submission of the first draft

4. 参考文献（12篇以上）

[1]carmen, p. what happened: a look at joseph heller’s forgotten novel. los angeles: the los angeles review of books, 2015.

[2]carsten, levisen. dark, but danish: ethnopragmatic perspectives on black humor[j].berlin: intercultural pragmatics.2018(18)

[3]coppin, margot;gaspard, jean-luc.black humor in the face of death[j] colombia: desde el jardin de freud; bogotaiss.2017(17):149-160.