American Humor in Promoting the Talk over the Wall with a Focus on Robert Frost’s Poems
Subject Areas : Iranian Sociological ReviewEbrahim Sheikhzadeh 1 , Masoumeh Ouladian 2 , Ida Rochani Adi 3
1 - English Language Department, Islamic Azad University, Damavand Branch, Iran
2 - Education Department, Islamic Azad University, Damavand Branch, Iran
3 - The Arts and Cultural Department, Gadjah Mada University, India
Keywords: Yankee characteristics, American history, Mending Wall, humor,
Abstract :
The Yankee is an American national phenomenon. He had leapt into national stature when slipped outside of his local character. A myth was woven around him and a cult of the Yankee developed by the permeation of the Yankee characteristics in many different characters who played tricks or told stories and entertained their audiences. The present article is an attempt to observe the Yankee myth, its origin, evolution and its incarnation in Robert Frost. It takes us to a journey back to the beginning of American history when the nation was about to find an identity for its own and to the native soil where its national funny figure sprang. Humor as the accommodating genre that hosts the Yankee myth is to be studied of its essence and manifestations. Frost as an icon of Yankee values representative of the mood and minds of the nation and the humor in his poems are to be focused on. The image of Frost as an American poet who very often receives appraisal for the terrifically tragic portraiture of life and whose poems are said to yield most fully to a design of darkness will be looked upon beside an image of him as the poet of many brilliantly comic poems who with serious artistic intent can give us a literate laugh. Frost’s philosophy of boundaries and borders and their worth, the optimal distance, respect to each other’s ideas, cooperation, importance of communication and many more of his universal concerns put into his poems are to be reviewed and his homey poem “Mending Wall” taken as an epitome of his works is isolated to be studied of its successful coupling of serious and comic that equip us with insights.