Rhetoric of Irony by Wayne C Booth

Rhetoric of Irony by Wayne C Booth

Perhaps no other critical label has been made to cover more ground than irony, and in our time irony has come to have so many meanings that by itself it means almost nothing. In this work, Wayne C. Booth cuts through the resulting confusions by analyzing how we manage to share quite specific ironies--and why we often fail when we try to do so. How does a reader or listener recognize the kind of statement which requires him to reject its clear and obvious meaning? And how does any reader know where to stop, once he has embarked on the hazardous and exhilarating path of rejecting what the words say and reconstructing what the author means?

In the first and longer part of his work, Booth deals with the workings of what he calls stable irony, irony with a clear rhetorical intent. He then turns to intended instabilities--ironies that resist interpretation and finally lead to the infinite absolute negativities that have obsessed criticism since the Romantic period.

Professor Booth is always ironically aware that no one can fathom the unfathomable. But by looking closely at unstable ironists like Samuel Becket, he shows that at least some of our commonplaces about meaninglessness require revision. Finally, he explores--with the help of Plato--the wry paradoxes that threaten any uncompromising assertion that all assertion can be undermined by the spirit of irony.

George M. Booth (1921-2005) was a George M. Professor Emeritus of English Language and Literature at the University of Chicago, Pullman Distinguished Service Professor. The Rhetoric of Fiction and For the Love of It: Amateuring and Its Rivals, both published by the University of Chicago Press, are among his many works.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780226065526
ISBN 10	0226065529
Title	Rhetoric of Irony
Author	Wayne C Booth
Condition	Unavailable
Publisher	The University of Chicago Press
Year published	1975-08-28
Number of pages	310
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
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