The meaning of irony
Subtitle: a psychoanalytic investigation
By: Frank Stringfellow, Jr.
Series: SUNY series, the margins of literature
Publisher: State University of New York Press; State Univ of New York Pr
Published: 1994
Place of publication: Albany, N.Y
Language: eng
Number of pages: 177
Subjects: Swift, Jonathan, 1667-1745.; Kafka, Franz, 1883-1924; Voyages, Imaginary -- History and criticism.; Satire, English -- History and criticism.; Psychoanalysis and literature.; Irony in literature.
Description: Genuinely interdisciplinary in approach, The Meaning of Irony brings together literary analysis and, from psychoanalysis, both theory and case studies. Its investigation ranges from everyday examples of verbal irony - conscious, and unconscious - to the complex irony of literature.

This book provides the first full account of verbal irony from a psychoanalytic point of view. Stringfellow shows how the rhetorical tradition, by viewing the literal level of irony as something the speaker doesn't really mean, flattens out the rich ambiguities of irony and misses the unconscious meanings that are hidden behind ironic statements. He argues that only psychoanalysis can recover these unconscious meanings and reveal the origins of irony.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [153]-167) and index.