We began this study on page one with some broad observations about the nature of irony--a few standard definitions along with attempts to classify the different types of irony. On page two we offered a brief survey of the ways that the concept of irony has evolved over the past 2,500 years. Finally, on these pages, a number of contemporary writers discuss what irony means in our own time.
Part III: Contemporary Observations on Irony
- The New Irony
The one truth the new irony has to tell us is that the man who uses it has no place to stand except in momentary community with those who seek to express a comparable alienation from other groups. The one conviction it expresses is that there are really no sides left: No virtue to oppose to corruption, no wisdom to oppose to cant. The one standard it accepts is that on which the simple man--the untutored non-ironist who fancies (in his dolt-hood) that he knows what good and bad should mean--is registered as the zero of our world, a cipher worth nothing but uninterrupted contempt.
(Benjamin DeMott, "The New Irony: Sidesnicks and Others," The American Scholar, 31, 1961-1962) - Swift, Simpson, Seinfeld . . . and Quotation Marks
[T]echnically, irony is a rhetorical device used to convey a meaning sharply different from or even opposite of the literal text. It’s not just saying one thing while meaning another--that’s what Bill Clinton does. No, it’s more like a wink or running joke among people in the know.
Jonathan Swift’s "A Modest Proposal" is a classic text in the history of irony. Swift argued that English lords should eat the children of the poor to alleviate hunger. There is nothing in the text which says, "hey, this is sarcasm." Swift lays out a pretty good argument and it’s up to the reader to figure it out that he’s not really serious. When Homer Simpson says to Marge, "Now who’s being naïve?" the writers are winking at all those people who love The Godfather (these people are commonly referred to as "men"). When George Costanza and Jerry Seinfeld keep saying "Not that there’s anything wrong with that!" every time they mention homosexuality, they are making an ironic joke about the culture’s insistence that we affirm our non-judgmentalism.
Anyway, irony is one of those words that most people understand intuitively but have a hard time defining. One good test is if you like to put "quotation marks" around words that shouldn’t have them. The "quotation marks" are "necessary" because the words have lost most of their literal "meaning" to the new politicized interpretations.
(Jonah Goldberg, "The Irony of Irony," National Review Online, April 28, 1999 - Irony and Ethos
Specifically rhetorical irony presents few problems. Puttenham's "drie mock" pretty well describes the phenomenon. One kind of rhetorical irony, however, may need further attention. There can be relatively few rhetorical situations where the target of persuasion is utterly ignorant of the designs someone has on him--the relationship of persuader and persuaded is almost always self-conscious to some degree. If the persuader wants to overcome any implicit sales resistance (especially from a sophisticated audience), one of the ways he will do it is to acknowledge that he is trying to talk his audience into something. By this, he hopes to gain their trust for as long as the soft sell takes. When he does this, he really acknowledges that his rhetorical maneuvering is ironical, that it says one thing while it tries to do another. At the same time, a second irony is present, since the pitchman is still far from laying all his cards on the table. The point to be made is that every rhetorical posture except the most naive involves an ironical coloration, of some kind or another, of the speaker's ethos.
(Richard Lanham, A Handlist of Rhetorical Terms, 2nd edition, University of California Press, 1991) - The End of the Age of Irony?
One good thing could come from this horror: it could spell the end of the age of irony. For some 30 years--roughly as long as the Twin Towers were upright--the good folks in charge of America's intellectual life have insisted that nothing was to be believed in or taken seriously. Nothing was real. With a giggle and a smirk, our chattering classes--our columnists and pop culture makers--declared that detachment and personal whimsy were the necessary tools for an oh-so-cool life. Who but a slobbering bumpkin would think, "I feel your pain"? The ironists, seeing through everything, made it difficult for anyone to see anything. The consequence of thinking that nothing is real--apart from prancing around in an air of vain stupidity--is that one will not know the difference between a joke and a menace.
No more. The planes that plowed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were real. The flames, smoke, sirens--real. The chalky landscape, the silence of the streets--all real. I feel your pain--really.
(Roger Rosenblatt, "The Age Of Irony Comes To An End," Time magazine, September 16, 2001)
Concluded on page four
