brief history of irony
"Of all the things I've lost, I miss my mind the most."
--- Mark Twain
The best definition of irony is by Edwin Whipple who said: "Irony is an insult conveyed in the form of a compliment." It is the art of saying two things without saying anything at all. Some philosophers such as Demosthenes even deemed the ironist as an even less respectable liar: he understated his own powers specifically for the purpose of escaping responsibility. And even in the ancient days they used a fox to represent irony.
However, the original model of irony did stem from Socrates. The first perspective on irony assumed the role of an ignorant man lost in wonder at the wisdom of others. The beauty in the perspective is how Socrates was remembered. An earl of Shaftesbury described Socrates as, "a perfect character; yet... veiled, and in a cloud... chiefly by reason of a certain exquisite and refined raillery which belonged to his manner, and by virtue of which he could treat the highest subjects, and those of commonest capacity... together,... both the heroic and the simple, the tragic and the comic.” He was known as a man who could talk to anyone from any walk of life; below or above on any existent social ladder.
Aristotle said in the Ethics, “the boaster is a man who pretends to have creditable qualities that he does not possess, while conversely the self-depreciator disclaims or disparages good qualities that he does possess. Midway between them is the straight forward sort of man.” Of the two evils defined, he preferred irony because it was less flashy. He even went on so much to say that irony was "gentlemanly."
People have also described Shakespeare to have been an ironist. He was the first author to introduce self-deception and hypocrisy and assumed all intelligent people were relativists.
This notion seems to havebeen behind Norman Brown's “law of irony” by whichit could be shown that the “partially disclaimedthought is Swift's own thought”
Randolph Bourne believed that since the ironist does not absolutely reject any experience but is constantly contrasting and criticizing and moving on to new experiences, he has an “intense feeling of aliveness” and“the broad honest sympathy of democracy”
Freud asserted that irony as saying the opposite of what one means parallels the dream, which “delights in representing a pair of opposites by means of one and the same composite image” or “changes an element from the dream-thoughts into its opposite.”
But perhaps my favorite rationale is:
"Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake."
-- Henry David Thoreau
Is it ironic when the point of your life becomes the dream you've always wanted? Does the dream die? or does life become that dream?
--- Mark Twain
The best definition of irony is by Edwin Whipple who said: "Irony is an insult conveyed in the form of a compliment." It is the art of saying two things without saying anything at all. Some philosophers such as Demosthenes even deemed the ironist as an even less respectable liar: he understated his own powers specifically for the purpose of escaping responsibility. And even in the ancient days they used a fox to represent irony.
However, the original model of irony did stem from Socrates. The first perspective on irony assumed the role of an ignorant man lost in wonder at the wisdom of others. The beauty in the perspective is how Socrates was remembered. An earl of Shaftesbury described Socrates as, "a perfect character; yet... veiled, and in a cloud... chiefly by reason of a certain exquisite and refined raillery which belonged to his manner, and by virtue of which he could treat the highest subjects, and those of commonest capacity... together,... both the heroic and the simple, the tragic and the comic.” He was known as a man who could talk to anyone from any walk of life; below or above on any existent social ladder.
Aristotle said in the Ethics, “the boaster is a man who pretends to have creditable qualities that he does not possess, while conversely the self-depreciator disclaims or disparages good qualities that he does possess. Midway between them is the straight forward sort of man.” Of the two evils defined, he preferred irony because it was less flashy. He even went on so much to say that irony was "gentlemanly."
People have also described Shakespeare to have been an ironist. He was the first author to introduce self-deception and hypocrisy and assumed all intelligent people were relativists.
This notion seems to havebeen behind Norman Brown's “law of irony” by whichit could be shown that the “partially disclaimedthought is Swift's own thought”
Randolph Bourne believed that since the ironist does not absolutely reject any experience but is constantly contrasting and criticizing and moving on to new experiences, he has an “intense feeling of aliveness” and“the broad honest sympathy of democracy”
Freud asserted that irony as saying the opposite of what one means parallels the dream, which “delights in representing a pair of opposites by means of one and the same composite image” or “changes an element from the dream-thoughts into its opposite.”
But perhaps my favorite rationale is:
"Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake."
-- Henry David Thoreau
Is it ironic when the point of your life becomes the dream you've always wanted? Does the dream die? or does life become that dream?
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