Bibliography
| Title: The Compass of Irony Type: Book Year: 1969 Abstract: "PART ONE (more standard/familiar definitions and types of verbal irony explored)
3-13: 'Ironology' --difficulties of defining the term, history of the problem.
5-- 'The concept of irony is also obscured by the frequent and close conjunction of irony with satire and with such phemena as the comic, the grotesque, the humorous, and the absurd. As a result there is a tendency to define irony in terms of the qualities of these other things, some of which defy definition even more successfully than irony. But irony is not essentially related to satire, and when it is related in practice it is a relationship of means to end; and although irony is frequently found overlapping with the absurd or the comic it may also be found overlapping with the tragic.' 'One has some sympathy, therefore, with the desire to define irony so as not to ignore what it is that characterizes effective or successful irony even though this should mean weighing the imponderable and objectifying the subjective. What can be said, putting it very simply, is that the art of irony is the art of saying something without really saying it. It is an art that gets its effects from below the surface, and this gives it a quality that resembles [p. 6] the depth and resonance of great art triumphantly saying much more than it seems to be saying.'
7 -- G. G. Sedgewick, 1913 Harvard dissertation traced the history of the word through classical Greek and Latin to medieval Latin.
8-- 1755, Dr. Johnson defined irony as 'A mode of speech in which the meaning is contrary to the words'. He and most of his successors until the 20th century entirely excluded dramatic irony (for example) from consideration. -- 'dramatic irony' introduced into English crit. by Conno Thirlwall in 1833, but (cf. Sedgewick) did not find general acceptance, even in 1907.
11 -- Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony, 292: -- 'Throughout this discussion I use the expressions: irony and the ironist, but I could as easily say: romanticism and the romanticist. Both expressions designate the same thing. The one suggests more the name with which the movement christened itself, the other the name with which Hegel christened it.' -- Kierk. identifies romanticism and irony.
13: writes in part because of the need to clarify the meaning of irony. 'Cleanth Brooks persuaded himself that all poetry, even "Tears, Idle Tears", is ironical. He took the view that the modification or qualification of any one part of a poem by the rest, that is, by the context in which it appears, is a kind of irony, or in other words, that the very way language is used in poetry (in contra-distinction to the way it is used in mathematics) ensures that all poetry is ironical. By taking this view he has done his best to finesse the word "irony" out of useful existence. We cannot go on meaningfully saying that Don Juan and Psalm 23 are both ironical.'
14-39: 'The Elements of Irony': defining irony, the duality of irony, the element of "innocence", victims of irony.
14 -- 'It might perhaps be prudent not to attempt any formal definitions. Since, however, Erich Heller, in his Ironic German, has already quite adequately not defined irony, there would be little point in not defining it all over again. I shall therefore hazard something like a definition begging the reader to remember, even though I should fail to do so myself, that I am wrting primarily as an ironologist and only secondarily if at all as a literary critic, that I have no brief and simple definition that will include all kinds of irony while excluding all that is not irony, that distinctions from one angle may not be distinctions from another, and that kinds of irony theoretically distinguishable will in practice be found merging into one another.'
19 -- 'In all instances of irony we can distinguish three essential elements. These we might, though loosely, call the formal requirements of irony as distinct from the subjective and aesthetic requirements mentioned above. Though theoretically distinguishable, they are closely interdependent. In the first place irony is a double-layered or
two-storey phenomenon. At the lower level is the situation either as it appears to the victim of irony (where there is a victim) or as it is deceptively presented by the ironist (where there is an ironist). . . . At the upper level is the situation as it appears to the observer or the ironist. The upper level need not be presented by the ironist; it need only be evoked by him or be present in the mind of the observer. Nor need it be more than a hint that the ironist does not quite see the situation as he has presented it at the lower level . . . or that the victim does not see the situation quite as it really is. In the second place there is always some kind of opposition between the two levels, an opposition that may take the form of [p. 20] contradiction, incongruity, or incompatibility. What is said may be contradicted by what is meant . . .; what the victim thinks may be contradicted by what the observer knows. . . . It is, however, by no means uncommon for there to be a further opposition and generally a more striking one between two elements both at the lower level. . . . [e.g., rival kings, in the Candide, claim victory after a battle.] In the third place there is in irony an element of "innocence"; either a victim is confidently unaware of the very possibility of there being an upper level or point of view that invalidates his own, or an ironist pretends not to be aware of it. There is one exception to this; in sarcasm or in a very overt irony the ironist does not pretend to be unaware of his real meaning and his victim is immediately aware of it. The most we can say is that the victim is at a mental disadvantage with respect to the ironist. Self-irony looks as if it would be another exception since the victim is also the ironical observer or the ironist and, strictly speaking, cannot either be or pretend to be an "innocent". But self-irony implies a "splitting of the ego" and hence an ability to see and to present oneself as an innocent.'
21 -- 'There is one familiar definition of (verbal) irony -- saying one thing and meaning another -- which is clearly defective since it is no more than the etymological sense of "allegoria".'
23 -- 'Simple ironies always function openly as correctives. One term of the ironic duality is seen, more or less immediately, as effectively contradicting, invalidating, exposing, or at the very least, modifying the other. . . . To ironize something (in this class of irony) is to place it, without comment, in whatever context will invalidate or correct it; to see something as ironic is to see it in such a context.'
24 -- 'The less familiar kind of irony is Double Irony in which the dominant feature is an opposition at the lower level.' -- seems particularly common amongst the French. -- rival kings celebrate victory (Candide).
Book 5, ch. 4 of L'Île des Pingouins: the P's had the best army in the world. So did the Marsouins. [I SAY: Josephus works mainly with simple irony, not double.]
25 -- 'Ironies of this kind which take the form of paradoxes, dilemmas, or what we call "impossible situations" would still function quite clearly as corrective ironies if the ironic point were simply that the victim was confidently unaware of being in a dilemma or if he only thought he was in a dilemma when in fact he was not. The case is somewhat different when the ironist or the ironical observer himself feels the paradox or dilemma as a real one.' 'Ironies of this kind do not function as simple correctives. It is not these ironies that we find in satire or comedy or wherever else it is desired simply to correct absurdities of opinion or behaviour. Simple corrective irony is effective at the point at which we pass from an apprehension of the ironic incongruity to a more or less immediate recognition of the invalidity of the ironist's pretended or the victim's confidently held view. Psychic tension is generated but rapidly released. In this other kind, however, the psychic tension generated by the ironic contradiction is not released or not entirely released by any element of resolution since the ironist
or the ironical observer remains, to some extent, involved in the irony'.
26-7 -- these are more philosophical and more modern ironies than simple ironies: '[p. 27] their subject matter is frequently the basic contradictions of nature and the human condition'. -- many critics recognize only this kind of irony as true irony: unresolvable conflicts between justice and mercy, experience and innocence, passion and duty, emotional purity and calculation.
27-8: M. rejects any such limitation of the word's meaning.
29-34 -- element of 'innocence'
30 -- 'The ironist always pretends, even though transparently as in sarcasm, to be innocent of his real meaning or intention.' 'The typical victim of an ironic situation or event is essentially an innocent. Just as scepticism depends upon belief -- we can be sceptical only of what someone believes or has believed or might believe -- so the irony of most ironc situations cannot exist without a complementary alazony. The alazon or victim is the man who blindly assumes that something is or is not the case, or confidently expects something to happen or not to happen; he does not even remotely suspect that things might not be as he supposes them to be, or might not turn out as he expects them to. . . . Simple ignorance is safe from irony, but ignorance compounded with the least degree of confidence counts as intellectual hubris and is a punishable offence. . . . The only shield against irony, therefore, is absolute circumspection, a shield no man can lift.'
47 -- acc. Sedgewick: '"Eironeia, as the Periclean Greeks conceived it, was not so much a mode of speech as a general mode of behaviour," and the word, down to Aristotle, was a term of abuse connoting "sly-foxery" with "a tinge of 'low-bred'". With Aristotle "eironeia came to mean 'pretended modesty' (and understatement as well)" and hence the deceptive use of words and irony as a figure of speech. But although classical drama bears witness to a highly developed sense of irony, that is, to a clear recognition of the emotional and dramatic power of ironic situations and events, it was not until the end of the eighteenth century that the name irony was given to them.'
47-53: why irony finally came to include situational irony -- a lot of guesses.
52-60: three grades of irony
54 -- overt: 'the victim or the reader or both are meant to see the ironist's real meaning at once'.
56 -- covert: 'What distinguishes Covert Irony is that it is intended not to be seen but rather to be detected. The Covert Ironist will aim at avoiding any tone or manner or any stylistic indication that would immediately reveal his irony'.
59-60 -- private irony. (But, as someone pointed out, there really is no such thing. We would never detect it if it were merely private irony. We may imagine it, but never know it.) -- e.g. (p. 26): Anatole France's Le Procurateur de Judée. Pilate discusses Judean post with a friend, 20 years later. The friend recalls Jesus' crucifixion, but Pilate can't at all remember it. Irony I: Pilate can't recall the crucifixion that made his own name famous, this most important of crucifixions in history. Pilate is confidently unaware of the reality. But possibly Irony II: we are confidently unaware of the reality that this was but one crucifixion among many thousands, not exceptional. Thus: the actual apperance and reality are blurred. (Is Pilate's reality mere appearance or actual reality?).
40-63: 'Basic Classifications': classifying irony, "he is being ironical". "It is ironical that . . . ", Three Grades of Irony: Overt, Covert, Private, The Four Modes of Irony
64-98: 'The Four Modes': impersonal irony, self-disparaging irony, ingénu irony, dramatized irony
99-118: 'Ironic Situations': irony of simple incongruity, irony of events, dramatic irony, irony of self-betrayal, irony or dilemma -- German Romantics invented Romantic irony 'with the startling claim that irony is the very principle of art'.
PART TWO (general irony, mostly)
119-58: 'General Irony': intro to general irony, general irony of events, or vanity of human wishes, general d
ramatic irony, cosmic irony, ironies of inevitable ignorance
159-215: 'Romantic Irony': the ironies of art, proto-romantic irony, romantic irony
216-47: 'Irony and the Ironist': the ironist's stance, the morals of irony". |