Shivering And Laughing With Tears

John Hawkes was a pioneering writer of contemporary experimentalism in the United States, who was famous for bold, experimental and unconventional writings. He created the world instead of displaying the world but he was criticized for his pioneering works in his early time, which was gradually accepted later. By the end of 20th century, it is believed that Hawkes was one of the most creative writers of contemporary writers in the United States. This thesis attempts to explore the characteristic and significance of Hawkes'novels based on the two angles of terror and comedy, among them emphasizing the two novels Second Skin and The Passion Artist.This thesis consists of introduction, the text and conclusion, moreover, the text is divided into three parts.Introduction This part aims to review Hawkess'writing experience and the current research situation of Hawkes'novels home and abroad. At present there are only few scholars commenting on the characteristic of Hawkes'novels, especially from the view of terror and comedy. Thus, this thesis focuses on this two characteristics of his novels, which is innovative to some extent.Chapter one This part is about the tradition of the Gothic novels in west and the terror style of Hawkes'novels. Firstly it describes the tradition of Gothic novels in west and the characteristics and expressions of the terror, and then summarizes the characteristics of terror different from western Gothic novels in Hawkes'novels, and finally further analyses the origination of the terror of Hawkes'novels.Chapter two It is about the aesthetic effects of the comedy in Hawkes'novels. This thesis summarizes the comic characteristic of Hawkes'novels, that is removing the traditional comedy patterns by the self-mock of anti-hero's and the latent tragic content in the apparent comic forms, and further points out the aesthetic effects of the comedy in Hawkes'novels that is to attain the goals of Catharsis through leading readers laughing and revealing the illusion which embodies that in his experimental writing Hawkes'bearing his social responsibility as a writer in mind to give an aesthetic value to his novels.Chapter three This part is about the combination between the terror and the comedy in Hawkes'novels. The combination of the two characteristic lies in safety in danger and laughing with tears while pleasing. The thesis in this part argues that physiological mechanism about Dopamine manipulation, psychological mechanism consisting of perception, comprehension, imagination and association with something in thinking of readers, aesthetic mechanism including adjusting readers'psychical distance automatically and shievering and laughing with tears these three mechanism make Hawkes'novels having special aesthetic value and significance that endowing Hawkes with surpassing the former traditional novelists, bearing Hawkes'thinking about society and human being, revealing postmodernism aesthetic contents.Conclusion The above-mentioned three parts separately discuss the characteristics of terror and comedy in Hawkes'novels and summarize the meaning of the co-existing characteristics. We believe that Hawkes make his novels unique by his unconventional experimental writing skills, thus ushering in the postmodernism novels in the United States.