THE CONCEPT OF HUMOR IN LIN YUTANG’S WRITING “MY COUNTRY AND MY PEOPLE”
Abstract
The aim of the article is to analyze the concept of humor in lin Yutang’s writing “My Country and My People”. Lin Yutang is a Sino-American writer best known for his research of comic category in the literary and, in general, cultural traditions of China and the West. He is the creator of the yōumò concept. Translating the English word humor to Chinese as yōumò and drawing the meaning of the term from Western literature, specifically from the works of a leading English writer George Meredith, his famous “Essay on Comedy” in particular, Lin Yutang publishes several studies devoted to the nature of humor, genesis and stages of satire development. The poetics of a satirical text based on the intertwining of Chinese and English humor cultures and traditions of realization of satire was developed in the most famous book of the writer and translator “My Country and My People” (1935). The issues of defining the genre of the writing lies mainly in the fact that it is written in the form of a reference book, but its light style, humorous mode of narration, varied topics, emotionality, language raciness and expressive images of two countries – Great Britain and China – do not allow to speak about the book only as the introduction of China to the West. Instead, “My Country and My People” is a unique attempt to comprehend and feel the Chinese worldview, lifestyle, social relations and cultural heritage by the Chinese themselves by using representational and expressive means of creating comic, which was a novelty for Chinese literary tradition. Through research on the phenomena of humor and satire as an essential and characteristic feature of English literature inwardness, he first discovers – and demonstrates – the social, historical and cognitive features of the perception of the satire in Chinese culture, as well as the types, techniques and methods of implementing the satire in the Chinese literary tradition by means of the English language. The distinction of the transfer of the satire in the Chinese artistic tradition in this book lies primarily in the fact that Lin Yutang shifts the locus of humor from the text to the reader. In other words, it shows that humor in its Western understanding is not “placed” in the Chinese text initially, it is born in the process of perception of a humorous passage by a reader with intelligence and “plastic imagination”. Generally, the nature of the Chinese humor, as Lin Yutang presents in his book, most precisely can be characterized in two theses. The first thesis was expressed by M.I. Steblin-Kamenskiy, who researched the history of laughter as the separation of the “directed” laughter from the “undirected” one, the author calls humor one of the most graceful forms of the directional laughter – “acceptance with mask of ridicule”. Another thesis, which helps to understand the nature of humor in the book “My Country and My People”, is disclosed in the article “How Humor Humanizes a Confucian Paragon: the case of Xue Baochai in Honglu Meng”. The same way humanization through humor in Lin Yutang’s book makes stereotypization and patterning impossible through creating images of Chinese people in the Eurocentric artistic paradigm world by transforming them into usual people with inherent virtues and vices.
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