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On the “Makes me wince!” thread several posts began to discuss Irony and its use and misuse, even abuse. Understanding irony has long been a personal effort and desire. I’m not so interested in the ironic discussed in the ‘wince’ thread, i.e., irony in daily life or irony as a literary technique, but I daresay something more profound. There is much in academia and lit. theory on the subject, which only makes it more complicated, the understanding, yet more intriguing to me.
I was given the stock definition early in high-school via dramatic irony, e.g., King Lear turning into a fool and The Fool commenting on it; or Lady Macbeth becoming the human vs. her earlier admonitions to her husband, and of course the ending of Romeo and Juliet.
But what I find more interesting is something like, for want of a better simile, sub-textual irony, something a bit more difficult to define. This in turn causes me to wonder about irony in nature, or perhaps ‘natural’ irony, e.g., perhaps too simple but the fact that ‘nature’ safeguards forests with the seeming chaos of fires that in the end help the ‘growth’ of the ‘trees for the forest’ vs. ‘the forest for the trees’ viewpoint. One could look at that literally as a literary example but it seems too big a reality to confine it so. Is the plate tectonic theory ironic? Is the law of gravity ironic? The Big Bang (whether as theory or reality)?
I suppose there might even be a philosophy of irony, or a psychology of irony (perhaps most detectible in the way dreams work, which of course relates to language itself). Is religious 'faith' an irony? 'God'? And so I return to language and its unique part in the makeup of the human. Is irony inherent in language, its structure, it sub-textual structure, its form-and-content? Or is the mind merely what the brain does?
Just one more specific comment: Shakespeare uses irony exquisitely, more profoundly than the examples learned in h.s. above. I read his texts with that sense of the inherent irony seeping, flowing at times, through the language, the structure of it, even given the 'translation' required to understand the Elizabethan consciousness (a truly impossble task I believe, and therefore somewhat ironic, or perhaps simply a mystery however profound). So I'm led back to 'dramatic irony' and wonder more about the 'irony of drama', including the actual 'acting' of it, which leads to 'role play', particularly the sexual.
Enough from me. Any thoughts, Lit. people?
I was given the stock definition early in high-school via dramatic irony, e.g., King Lear turning into a fool and The Fool commenting on it; or Lady Macbeth becoming the human vs. her earlier admonitions to her husband, and of course the ending of Romeo and Juliet.
But what I find more interesting is something like, for want of a better simile, sub-textual irony, something a bit more difficult to define. This in turn causes me to wonder about irony in nature, or perhaps ‘natural’ irony, e.g., perhaps too simple but the fact that ‘nature’ safeguards forests with the seeming chaos of fires that in the end help the ‘growth’ of the ‘trees for the forest’ vs. ‘the forest for the trees’ viewpoint. One could look at that literally as a literary example but it seems too big a reality to confine it so. Is the plate tectonic theory ironic? Is the law of gravity ironic? The Big Bang (whether as theory or reality)?
I suppose there might even be a philosophy of irony, or a psychology of irony (perhaps most detectible in the way dreams work, which of course relates to language itself). Is religious 'faith' an irony? 'God'? And so I return to language and its unique part in the makeup of the human. Is irony inherent in language, its structure, it sub-textual structure, its form-and-content? Or is the mind merely what the brain does?
Just one more specific comment: Shakespeare uses irony exquisitely, more profoundly than the examples learned in h.s. above. I read his texts with that sense of the inherent irony seeping, flowing at times, through the language, the structure of it, even given the 'translation' required to understand the Elizabethan consciousness (a truly impossble task I believe, and therefore somewhat ironic, or perhaps simply a mystery however profound). So I'm led back to 'dramatic irony' and wonder more about the 'irony of drama', including the actual 'acting' of it, which leads to 'role play', particularly the sexual.
Enough from me. Any thoughts, Lit. people?