What Is Irony?

Part II: A Survey of Irony

• Socrates, That Old Fox
  The most influential model in the history of irony has been the Platonic Socrates. Neither Socrates nor his contemporaries, however, would have associated the word eironeia with modern conceptions of Socratic irony. As Cicero put it, Socrates was always "pretending to need information and professing admiration for the wisdom of his companion"; when Socrates' interlocutors were annoyed with him for behaving in this way they called him eiron, a vulgar term of reproach referring generally to any kind of sly deception with overtones of mockery. The fox was the symbol of the eiron.
  
  All serious discussions of eironeia followed upon the association of the word with Socrates.
  (Norman D. Knox, "Irony," The Dictionary of the History of Ideas, 2003)

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• The Western Sensibility
  Some go so far as to say that Socrates' ironic personality inaugurated a peculiarly Western sensibility. His irony, or his capacity not to accept everyday values and concepts but live in a state of perpetual question, is the birth of philosophy, ethics, and consciousness.
  (Claire Colebrook, Irony: The New Critical Idiom, Routledge, 2004)
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• Skeptics and Academics
  It is not without cause that so many excellent philosophers became Skeptics and Academics, and denied any certainty of knowledge or comprehension, and held opinions that the knowledge of man extended only to appearances and probabilities. It is true that in Socrates it was supposed to be but a form of irony, Scientiam dissimulando simulavit, for he used to dissemble his knowledge, to the end to enhance his knowledge.
  (Francis Bacon, The Advancement of Learning, 1605)
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• From Socrates to Cicero
  "Socratic irony," as it is constructed in Plato's dialogues, is therefore a method of mocking and unmasking the presumed knowledge of his interlocutors, consequently leading them to truth (Socratic maieutics). Cicero establishes irony as a rhetoric figure which blames by praise and praises by blame. Apart from this, there is the sense of "tragic" (or "dramatic") irony, which focuses on the contrast between the protagonist's ignorance and the spectators, who are aware of his fatal destiny (as for example in Oedipus Rex).
  ("Irony," in Imagology: The Cultural Construction and Literary Representation of National Characters, edited by Manfred Beller and Joep Leerssen, Rodopi, 2007)

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• Quintilian Onwards
  Some of the rhetoricians recognize, though almost as if in passing, that irony was much more than an ordinary rhetorical figure. Quintilian says [in Institutio Oratoria, translated by H.E. Butler] that "in the figurative form of irony the speaker disguises his entire meaning, the disguise being apparent rather than confessed. . . ."
  
  But having touched on this borderline where irony ceases to be instrumental and is sought as an end in itself, Quintilian draws back, quite properly for his purposes, to his functional view, and in effect carries nearly two millennia worth of rhetoricians along with him. It was not until well into the eighteenth century that theorists were forced, by explosive developments in the use of irony itself, to begin thinking about ironic effects as somehow self-sufficient literary ends. And then of course irony burst its bounds so effectively that men finally dismissed merely functional ironies as not even ironic, or as self-evidently less artistic.
  (Wayne C. Booth, A Rhetoric of Irony, University of Chicago Press, 1974)
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• Cosmic Irony Revisited
  In The Concept of Irony (1841), Kierkegaard elaborated the idea that irony is a mode of seeing things, a way of viewing existence. Later, Amiel in his Journal Intime (1883-87) expressed the view that irony springs from a perception of the absurdity of life. . . .
  
  Many writers have distanced themselves to a vantage point, a quasi-godlike eminence, the better to be able to view things. The artist becomes a kind of god viewing creation (and viewing his own creation) with a smile. From this it is a short step to the idea that God himself is the supreme ironist, watching the antics of human beings (Flaubert referred to a "blague supérieure") with a detached, ironical smile. The spectator in the theatre is in a similar position. Thus the everlasting human condition is regarded as potentially absurd.
  (J.A. Cuddon, "Irony," A Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory, Basil Blackwell, 1979)
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• Irony in Our Time
  I am saying that there seems to be one dominating form of modern understanding; that it is essentially ironic; and that it originates largely in the application of mind and memory to the events of the Great War [World War I].
  (Paul Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory, Oxford University Press, 1975)
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• Supreme Irony
  With supreme irony, the war to "make the world safe for democracy" [World War I] ended by leaving democracy more unsafe in the world than at any time since the collapse of the revolutions of 1848."
  (James Harvey Robinson, The Human Comedy, 1937)