definitions of irony

7/30/2019 Definitions of Irony

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From Irony (The New Critical Idiom)by C. Colebrook (2003):

Theironic man, in opposition to the boaster, understates his worth. LeoStrauss
http://www.amazon.com/Irony-New-Critical-Idiom-Colebrook/dp/0415251338/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1247167516&sr=1-4http://www.amazon.com/Irony-New-Critical-Idiom-Colebrook/dp/0415251338/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1247167516&sr=1-4http://www.amazon.com/Irony-New-Critical-Idiom-Colebrook/dp/0415251338/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1247167516&sr=1-4


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Irony (Merriam Websters): Etymology: Latin ironia, from GreekeirOnia, fromeirOn dissembler 1: a pretense of ignorance and of willingness to learn from anotherassumed in order to make the other's false conceptions conspicuous by adroit questioning

-- called also Socratic irony

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Irony: expression of something which is contrary to the intended meaning; thewords say one thing but mean another.

*Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;And Brutus is an honourable man. Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

From http://www.uky.edu/AS/Classics/rhetoric.html

To be ironic: (eirneuesthai) is to dissemble, to say less than one thinks, topresent oneself as less than one is. The opposite of irony is boastfulness,claiming to be more than one is. From Four Texts on Socrates trans. byThomas G. West

Irony: [The philosopher] relates to all the others ironically; i.e. with sympathyand a playful distance From Allan Blooms Closing of the American Mind

Soren Kierkegaards 1941 doctoral dissertation [like all things Kierkegaardwrites, this thought is so sad! PN]: The Concept of Irony: With Constant

Reference to Socrates: Kierkegaard views Socrates as one who strives for theideal or infinite, but never arrives there. Socrates irony is the expression of thisnegativity.

1755 definition ofIrony from Samuel Johnsons famous dictionary:Irony: A mode of speech in which the meaning is contrary to the words.

Definition ofIrony from a modern dictionary:Irony: An incongruity between what might be expected and what actuallyoccurs.

Accismus: a form ofIrony in which a person feigns indifference to or pretendsto refuse something he or she desires. The fox's dismissal of the grapes inAesop's fable of the fox and the grapes is an example of accismus. A classicexample is that of Caesar's initial refusal to accept the crown, a circumstancereported by one of the conspirators in William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. Theword is from the Greek akkisms, prudery, and is a derivative ofakkzesthai, tofeign ignorance. From an Encyclopdia Britannica Online article

From Leo Strausss The City and Man, Ch. II On Platos Republic:

Irony: One of Socrates peculiarities [is that] he was a master of irony.[Strauss next brings up the question of whether Plato and Socrates have ateaching:] Very much, not to say everything, seems to depend on whatSocratic irony is. Irony is a kind of dissimulation, or of untruthfulness. Aristotletherefore treats the habit of irony primarily as a vice. Yet irony is thedissembling, not of evil actions or of vices, but rather of good actions or ofvirtues: the ironic man, in opposition to the boaster, understates his worth. Ifirony is a vice, it is a graceful vice. Properly used, it is not a vice at all: themagnanimous man the man who regards himself as worthy of great things

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while in fact being worthy of them is truthful and frank because he is in thehabit of looking down and yet he is ironical in his intercourse with the many. 1

Irony is then the noble dissimulation of ones worth, of ones superiority. We maysay, it is the humanity peculiar to the superior man: he spares the feelings of hisinferiors by not displaying his superiority. The highest form of superiority issuperiority in wisdom. Irony in the highest sense will then be thedissimulation of ones wisdom, i.e. the dissimulation of ones wise

thoughts [Jim adds in his marginal notes here, A form of humility]. This cantake two forms: either expressing on a wise subject such thoughts (e.g.generally accepted thoughts) as are less wise than ones own thoughts or[and the following is so Socrates! PN] refraining from expressing anythoughts regarding a wise subject on the ground that one does not haveknowledge regarding it and therefore can only raise questions but cannotgive any answers. If irony is essentially related to the fact that there is a naturalorder of rank among men, it follows that irony consists in speaking differentlyto different kinds of people.2

We may conclude that the Platonic dialogue says different things to different

people not accidentally, as every writing does, but that it is so contrived as tosay different things to different people, or that it is radically ironical. ThePlatonic dialogue, if properly read, reveals itself to possess the flexibility oradaptability of oral communication.

What it means to read a good writing properly is intimated by Socrates in thePhaedrus when he describes the character of a good writing. A writing is good ifit complies with logographic necessity, with the necessity which ought to governthe writing of speeches: every part of the written speech much be necessary tothe whole; the place where each part occurs is the place where it is necessarythat it should occur; in a word, the good writing must resemble the healthy

animal which can do its proper work well.

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The proper work of a writing is totalk to some readers and to be silent to others. But does not every writingadmittedly talk to all readers?

Since Platos Socrates does not solve this difficulty for us, let us have recourse toXenophons Socrates. According to Xenophon, Socrates art of conversationwas twofold. When someone contradicted him on any point, he went back to theassumption underlying the whole dispute by raising the question what is ...regarding the subject matter of the dispute and by answering it step by step; inthis way the truth became manifest to the very contradictors.

But when he discussed a subject on his own initiative, i.e. when he talked topeople who merely listened, he proceeded through generally accepted opinionsand thus produced agreement to an extraordinary degree. This latter kind of theart of conversation which leads to agreement, as distinguished from evident truth,is the art which Homer ascribed to the wily Odysseus by calling him a safespeaker.

It may seem strange that Socrates treated the contradictors better than the docilepeople. The strangeness is removed by another report of Xenophon. Socrates,

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we are told, did not approach all men in the same manner. He approacheddifferently the men possessing good natures by whom he was naturally attractedon the one hand, the various types of men lacking good natures on the other.

The men possessing good natures are the gifted ones: those who are quick tolearn, have a good memory and are desirous for all worthwhile subjects oflearning.

It would not be strange if Socrates had tried to lead those who are able to thinktoward the truth and to lead the others toward agreement in salutary opinions orto confirm them in such opinions. Xenophons Socrates engaged in his mostblissful work only with his friends or rather his good friends. For, as PlatosSocrates says, it is safe to say the truth among sensible friends.

1 Aristotle, Eth. Nic. 1108a19-22; 1124b29-31; 1127a20-26, b22-31.2 Plato, Rivals, 133d8-e1; cf. 134c1-6.3 Phaedrus, 275d4-276a7 and 264b7-c5.

Irony: Aristotles very definition of irony, according to which the superiordisclaim the estimable qualities they in fact possess, presupposes a difference incapacity and rank among human beings. (Ethics 1108a22; 1124b30-31;1127b22-32 From p. 156 of the American Political Science Review, Vol.89, No. 1, March 1995 (Robert C. Bartlett of Emory Universitys response toMary Nichols criticism of Bartletts 1994 APSR article)

irony

4 entries found forirony.

To select an entry, click on it.Go

Main Entry: irony

Pronunciation: 'I-r&-nE also 'I(-&)r-nE

Function: noun

Inflected Form(s):plural-nies

Etymology: Latin ironia, from GreekeirOnia, from eirOn dissembler

1: a pretense of ignorance and of willingness to learn from another assumed in order to

make the other's false conceptions conspicuous by adroit questioning -- called also

Socratic irony2 a: the use of words to express something other than and especially the opposite of the

literal meaning b: a usually humorous or sardonic literary style or form characterized by

irony c: an ironic expression or utterance

3 a (1) : incongruity between the actual result of a sequence of events and the normal or

expected result (2) : an event or result marked by such incongruity b: incongruity

between a situation developed in a drama and the accompanying words or actions that is

understood by the audience but not by the characters in the play -- called also dramatic

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irony, tragic irony

synonym see WIT

http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-29025/rhetoric

irony- a discrepancy between a speaker's literal statement and his attitudeor intent

irony - language device, either in spoken or written form (verbal irony), inwhich the real meaning is concealed or contradicted by the literal meanings ofthe words, or in a theatrical situation (dramatic irony), in which there is anincongruity between what is expected and what occurs. Verbal irony arisesfrom a sophisticated or resigned awareness of contrast between what is andwhat ought to be and expresses a controlled pathos without sentimentality.It is a form of indirection that avoids overt praise or censure, as in the casualirony of the statement That was a smart thing to do! (meaning veryfoolish).

Dramatic irony depends on the structure of a work rather than its use of words.

In plays it is often created by the audience's awareness of a fate in store forthe characters that they themselves are unaware of, as when Agamemnonaccepts the flattering invitation to walk upon the purple carpet that is tobecome his shroud.

The surprise ending of an O. Henry short story is also an example of dramaticirony, as is the more subtly achieved effect of Anton Chekhov's story Ladywith the Dog, in which an accomplished Don Juan engages in a routineflirtation only to find himself seduced into a passionate lifelong commitment toa woman who is no different from all the others.

The term irony has its roots in the Greek comic character Eiron, a cleverunderdog who by his wit repeatedly triumphs over the boastful characterAlazon.

The Socratic irony of the Platonic dialogues derives from this comic origin.Feigning ignorance and humility, Socrates goes about asking silly and obviousquestions of all sorts of people on all sorts of subjects, only to expose theirignorance as more profound than his own.

The nonliterary use of irony is usually considered sarcasm.

http://books.google.com/books?id=xRzDDnpEYJ8C&dq=The+Concept+of+Irony,+With+Continual+Reference+to+Socrates&pg=PA5&ots=6x-QlUGkMo&sig=IxCoOW_ft3iuyFKFmN9QCsnBL9U&prev=http://www.google.com/search%3Fhl%3Den%26q%3DThe%2BConcept%2Bof%2BIrony%252C%2BWith%2BContinual%2BReference%2Bto%2BSocrates%26btnG%3DGoogle%2BSearch&sa=X&oi=print&ct=result&cd=1#PPA8,M1

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url above discusses Schlegels Aphorisms several of which deal with irony:Nos. 7, 28, 37, 42, 48, and 108

http://www.erickraft.com/markdorset/forbabmag/sillytitle.html

Friedrich Schlegel writes:

Socratic irony is the only entirely involuntary and nevertheless completely

conscious dissimulation. It is equally impossible to attain it artificially or tobetray it. For him who does not possess it, it will remain an enigma even

after the frankest avowal. It will deceive only those who consider it an

illusion, who either enjoy its delightful archness of mocking at everybody or

who become angry when they suspect that they too are meant. In it,

everything must be jest and yet seriousness, artless openness and yet deep

dissimulation. It originates in the union of a sense of an art of living and a

scientific intellect, in the meeting of accomplished natural philosophy and

accomplished philosophy of art. It contains and incites a feeling of the

insoluble conflict of the absolute and the relative, of the impossibility andnecessity of total communication. It is the freest of all liberties, for it

enables us to rise above our own self; and still the most legitimate, for it is

absolutely necessary. It is a good sign if the harmonious dullards fail to

understand this constant self-parody, if over and over again they believe and

disbelieve until they become giddy and consider jest to be seriousness and

seriousness to be jest.

Friedrich Schlegel,Aphorisms from the Lyceum, 1797 (translated by Ernst

Behler and Roman Struc)

Irony and Religious Belief

By Gregory L. Reece

http://books.google.com/books?id=xRzDDnpEYJ8C&pg=PA8&dq=%22Schlegel%27s+aphorisms%22&as_brr=0&sig=3idXeh-

BgriV7ROwpchi2GNyJXg

Between Irony and Witness: Kierkegaard's Poetics of Faith,Hope, and Love

By Joel D. S. Rasmussen

p. 107

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CHAPTER FOUR The Imitation of Christ

How true what Thomas a Kempis says (in The Imitation of Christ, bk. I, ch. 2):Therefore be not lifted up on account of any skill or knowledge, but rather fear onaccount of the knowledge that is given you. For the more you know and the betteryou understand it, the more rigorously you will be judged if you have not lived moreholily. -- Kierkegaard, Journal and Papers

The previous chapter illuminated the figures of the absurd and the incognito as two critical

places where Kierkegaard (hereinafter, K) employs limit-expressions to provoke the readerout of his or her habitual apathy respecting Christian claims for the divinity of Jesus the Christ.Ks poetic figure of the absurd serves to express the idea that sinful understanding, the earthly ear isdeaf to Gods Word, and the figure of the incognito indicates that the earthly eye is blind to Gods idealfor human existence, which, as will be discussed in what follows, is the life of Christ, a life expressing

Anti-Climacuss assertion that truth is not found in cognition or in knowledge, but in a being.1

This chapter will assess Ks fullest articulation of what he believes Christian life should look likewhen one responds to the God-man not with the earthly ear and the earthly eye, but with theear of faith and the eye of faith.2 The true expression of Christian existence, according to Ks mostexemplary Christian Pseudonym, Anti-Climacus, entails the imitation of Christ. As William Schweikerhas written, If the Incarnation is the unique condition for the advance on Socratic thought, then theimitation is the corresponding way of edification or practice beyond the flights of idealistic recollection or

dialectics.3

A number of scholars have detailed the respects in which this emphasis upon personal imitationprecipitates a significant break with the ascendant form of Christianity that K derides as theEstablishment or as Christendom and is meant to force the reader into a passionate relationto the world.4 What I want to address here is how, in addition, the emphasis on imitation marks theculmination of Ks intentional discontinuity with early German Romanticism and speculative idealism,5 andhow his understanding of the imitation of Christ actually completes his poetics by emphasizing thetransition from imaginingthe ideal topracticingit. This chapter thus has a number of objectives: (1) tosituate Ks late emphasis on the imitation of Christ in terms of the literary tradition of mimesis; (2) to showhow by this emphasis on the imitation of Christ K seeks to retrieve a feature of Christianity that hebelieves has been lost within the Christendom of his era; (3) to demonstrate how by this emphasis on the

imitation of Christ K seeks to overcome the irony of early German Romanticism; and (4) to illustrate howthis emphasis on the imitation of Christ marks a culmination of Ks poetics by specifying the manner inwhich he thinks a Christian ought to move from reflective interpretation of the Christian story to actualapplication of that story in ones life.

The second part of Ks own dissertation treated the Romantic attempt to create a revolutionarypoetics of ironic dissimulation. While the definition of the term irony as dissimulation is a classicaldefinition, what is nonetheless new with Romantcism is the celebration of ironic dissimulation as a poetic

ideal.6 Whereas classical and neoclassical poetics conceived of art in terms of its simulation or, more

1 K,Practice in Christianity, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ.

Press, 1991), 206, SV1, 12:190.2 K, Soren Kierkegaards Journals and Papers, ed. And trans (the Hongs), 7 vols. (Bloomington, Indiana

Univ. Press, 1967-1978) 4.3916;Papirer, IV C (n.d., 1844).3 William Schweiker,Mimetic Reflections (New York: Fordham Univ. Press, 1990), 158.4 Read the url if you want this its lengthy -- PN5 Read the url if you want this PN6 This is why the word irony, as K notes, is customarily translated as dissimulation (K, The

Concept of Irony, with Continual Reference to Socrates), trans by the Hongs [Princeton, NJ:

Princeton Univ. Press, 1989), 255, SKS, 1:294). Here K cites Theophrastuss definition of irony

as false and fraudulent dissimulation and concealment. K, in contrast to Theophrastus, goes on

to distinguish irony as more thoroughgoing than objective dissimulation: Dissimulation denotes

more the objective act that carries out the discrepancy between essence and phenomenon; irony

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precisely, in terms of its memesis of action and nature, early German Romantic poetics by contrastcelebrated ironic dissimulation, creative originality, and the evocation of the inimitable. Indeed, the primetarget of the Romantic assault on traditional aesthetics was not classicism as such, in Ernst Behlerswords, but the aesthetic system of the ars poetica and neoclassicism in general, the view of literature

as representation of reality, as imitation, as mimesis.7

As August Wilhelm Schlegel wrote in a contribution to the 1798Athenaeum Fragments, theburgeoning Romantic literature manifested a mania for originality.8

In the writings of several of its major representatives, therefore, Romantic poetics heralded anew era of poetry that sought to supplant to classical theory of the mimetic imagination with atruly innovative ironic imagination. However, of the major representatives of early GermanRomanticism, it has been Friedrich Schlegels aphorisms in the 1797 Lyceum Fragments and the1798Athenaeum Fragments that have tended to dominate critical discussion on romantic irony.9 Thespace given over to criticizing Schleges concept of irony in Ks dissertation suggests that this dominancehas long been the case. What I want to show in this chapter is that Ks alternative, by contrast, promotesan idiosyncratic synthesis of the classical (and neoclassical) theory of mimesis with the Christian ideal ofimitatio Christiand shows that mimesis is not inimical to pathos and the experience of the inimitable, butcan actually foster the limit-experience that Anti-Climacus simply calls faith. What this chapterdemonstrates, therefore, is that Ks resuscitation of the imitation of Christ tradition can be read as acritical alternative to the early German Romantic prejudice against theories of mimesis.

K transfigures the Romantic ideal of living poetically (Make poetry lively and sociable, and lifeand society poetical10) into his own doctrine of existential striving within a poetic production that Godcreates. Ultimately, the culmination of Ks decade-long conversation with his Romantic precursorsundermines the autonomy of the Romantic ideal of dissimulation through a resuscitation of the ideal ofimitation. Thus, Ks final misprision of ironys great requirement11 occurs when he retrofits the Romanticideal of living poetically to conform to the pattern of another, more ultimate precursor, namely, God inChrist.

My argument here is that Ks late idealization of imitation signals a retrieval and revision ofpoetic mimesis which, when integrated with the poetics of reconciliation that I elaborated inchapter 2 (i.e. God the poet fulfills the divine ideal for human life by actually living poetically inChrist) culminates in the transposition of living poetically into a novel conception of Christian

discipleship. On this matter, the line from Ks dissertation is prescient where he writes, TheChristian lets himself be poetically composed, and in this respect a simple Christian lives far

also denotes the subjective pleasure as the subject frees himself by means of irony fro the

restraint in which the continuity of lifes conditions holds him thus the ironist can literally be

said to kick over the traces. (Concept of Irony, 255-56, SKS, 1:294-95).7 Ermst Behler, German Romantic Literary Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1993) 3.8 A.W. Schlegel, inFriedrich Schlegels Lucinde and the Fragments, by Friedrich Schlegel, trans.

Peter Firchow (Mpls: Univ of MN Press, 1971), 188;Athenaeum Fragments, no. 197.9 Frederick Burwick,Mimesis and Its Romantic Reflections (Univ. Park: Penn State Univ Press,

2001), 162. While the writings of Coleridge brought English Romanticism under the direct

influence of this early German movement, the particular concept of irony does not seem to have

animated English imaginations with the same intensity it exerted in Germany and in Denmark.For a discussion of the British reception of German idealism and Romanticism, see James Engell,

The Creative Imagination: Enlightenment to Romanticism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ.

Press, 1981). See also David Jasper, Coleridge as Poet and Religious Thinker(Allison Park, PA:

Pickwick Publications, 1985). Jasper explains that the insight that the extent and nature of

Coleridges dependence upon German thinkers is continually muddied by his own insistence on

his priority, or at least independence of them (82).10 Schlegel, Schlegels Lucinde and the Fragments, 175.11 As is well known, to recapitulate Ks claim, ironys great requirement was to live poetically

(Concept of Irony, 280; SKS, 1:316).

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more poetically than many a brilliant intellectual.12 In thus relating poetic mimesis and lived imitatio,this chapter will make evident how for K the value of his poetic productions is not ultimately that theymake life and society poetical but that they imaginatively intensify ones responsibilities within thecontext of ones avowed commitments.

Before I launch into a discussion ofPractice in Christianityand Anti-Climacuss notion of Christ ascriterion and prototype for both ethical and liturgical imitation, however, I want first to sketch an outlineof the relationship between irony and imitation within literary history and theory. A comprehensive studyof the historical interaction between the concepts of irony and imitation is byond the compass of thisstudy. Nonetheless, what follows should afford amble context for a discussion of Ks resuscitation ofimitation in the wake of Romantic irony.

From Classical Mimesis to Medieval Imitatio

In the secondary literature on Romanticism of the last fifty years, M.H. Abramss The Mirror andthe Lamp (1953) has arguably set the terms of discussion regarding imitation and originality. Thetrajectory Abrams details in that work an artistic development away from the poetic ideal of imitation andtoward that of a poetic ideal variously understood in term s of originality, expression, or creativity hasbeen widely acknowledged. One of the unfortunate consequences of this influential work, however, hasbeen a tendency to provoke in its readers the presumption that, in the words of Frederick Burwick, oncethe lamp began to glow the mirror was shattered. Abrams did not mean to imply an either/or relationbetween imitation and creativity, of course, but what Burwick sees is an inclination to think that once the

Romantic primacy of mind and emotion had become established in literature, imitative dimensions ofgreat literature did not persist or should not have persisted. Judgments by contemporary thinkers such as

Arne Melberg who speaks of romantic epistemology in terms of a breakwith all traditional mimesis confirm Burwicks claim regarding this propensity to obscure elements of continuity between classicismand Romanticism.

12 K, Concept of Irony, 281; SKS, 1:316).

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THIS IS GOOGLE BOOK SEARCH, SO GOOGLE LEAVING A FEW PAGES OUT PURPOSELY. PN

CHAPTER FIVE

Between Irony and Witness

Many a poet should say with an old German poet:O mighty God! O just judgeHave mercy upon me a poor poet

-- K, Journal and Papers

In the final pages ofPractice in ChristianityAnti-Climacus laments the spirituallassitude of bourgeois society:

Soon it will have gone so far that people must make use of art in themost various ways to help get Christendom to show at least some

sympathy with Christianity. But if art is going to help, be it the art of thesculptor, the art of the orator, the art of the poet, we will have at mostadmirers who, besides admiring the artist, are led by his presentations toadmire what is Christian. But strictly speaking, the admirer is indeed notrue Christian; only the imitator is that.13

This critique of art, which is surely also a self-critique of Ks art, echoes Ks earliestcritical comments regarding the relation of poetry to actuality. The individual whostands back and admires relates to the object of admiration in a merely imaginativeway, K thinks, rather than seeking to make what he or she admires actual in his or herown life through imitation of what he or she admires. It is clear, however, that K doesnot entirely believe Anti-Climacuss statement that artists and poets can only fosteradmiration, for his own conception of his entire authorship, and of his own role as apoet, makes clear that he thinks a certain kid of poetic production can serve a definitepurpose in the larger mission or promoting Christian imitation.

Friedrich von Schlegel: Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms, tr, intro, and annot. ByErnst Behler and [Romaro Struc?], Penn State, 1968, 167 p. 67-27115

(An aside (but cute!): PN

An aphorism ought to be entirely isolated from the

surrounding world like a little work of art and completein itself like a hedgehog.)

Friedrich Von Schlegel

13 K,Practice in Christianity, trans by the Hongs (Princeton Univ Press, 1991), 256-57; SV1, 12:234.

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definitions of irony

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