Cuprins
- Introduction 3
- Chapter I: Irony and Satire: The Might of the Word
- 1.1 Early and Later Concepts of Irony 5
- 1.2 Various Classification of Irony.
- The Ironic World of Short Stories 9
- 1.3 Development of Satire across the Century.
- Subject and Structure 12
- Chapter II: Pragmatic Aspect of Irony and Satire
- In O’Henry Short Stories
- 2.1 O’Henry’s Style of Writing 21
- 2.2 The Nature of Irony in O’Henry’s Shoert Stories 26
- 2.3 The Nature of Satire in O’Henry’s Short Stories 37
- Conclusion 45
- Bibliography 47
- Appendix I 50
- Appendix I 54
Extras din licență
Introduction
The present paper is entitled “Irony and Satire in O’Henry’s Short Stories”. The theoretical foundation of this work is Professor Thirwall. C “On the Irony of Sophocles”, D. C. Muecke “The Compass of Irony”, Howard D. Weinbrot
“Eighteenth-Century Satire”. Of course some other sources were also used (S. Kierkegaard, Collins, Lockwood Thomas etc.). In accordance with all the information gathered for this paper its aim is to be stated: to describe and specify irony and satire as stylistic devices, to establish their characteristics and functions, to state the elements and classifications in order indicate the style of O’Henry’s writing. Correspondingly the paper falls into two Chapters:
1. Irony and Satire: The Might of the World.
2. Pragmatic Aspect of Irony and Satire in O’Henry’s Short Stories.
The paper concludes with a supplement presenting samples of irony and satire from original works by O’Henry, and the list of authors whose works were used in the course of writing this paper. As it was already mentioned all the examples were taken from O’Henry’s short stories comprising 2000 pages (“The Gift of Magi and other Stories”, “Memoria Award Prize Stories, The Skylight Room and other Stories” , “Selected Stories” etc.).
To start the paper a considerable attention is given to the way of defying irony and satire by different scholars and of course to the classification of irony and satire.
Professor Muecke is inclined to divide irony into verbal and situational, dramatic irony and irony of events. Professor Lockwood gives a considerable attention to the development of satire across the century.
This classification will certainly be used as a basis of the analyses of sample examples of irony and satire from O’Henry’s short stories in chapter II. A thorough consideration will be given on irony of fate, studied briefly by Muecke and to subject and structure of satire studied by Lockwood as well as by Howard.
Though irony and satire is not very widely used, every author mentions a list of writers how used irony and satire very successfully to achieve the highest stylistic effect.
During the work on the present paper several research, methods were used:
- analysis (used mainly in chapter I);
- synthesis (used mainly in chapter II);
- statistic method (used mainly in Appendixes);
bibliographical method (as library research).
The theme of the paper is rather actual, because it may open ways to an interesting analysis of irony and satire used in literary woks due to its large variety and due to the ways of author’s creative usage of it.
CHAPTER I
Irony and Satire: The Might of the Word
1.1. Early and Later Concepts of Irony
Irony in its original Greek sense means the pretense of ignorance in order to ridiculate a person or to expose the truth about a situation. We see this very old kind of irony still at work today when a story or movie shows a shrewd country person pretending to be dumb in order to make fun of a city slicker. But irony has also come to have far broader meanings.
Bibliografie
Collins, A., “A Discourse Concerning Ridicule and Irony in Writing” London, 1729.
Howard. D.Weinbrot, “Eighteenth – Century Satire”, Cambridge. 1924.
Thirlwall, C., “On the Irony of Sophocles” in The Philological Museum, vol. II, 1833, and in Remains, Literary and Theological, ed. J. Stewart Perowne, London, 1878, vol. III.
Lockwood Thomas, “Post Augustan Satire”, U.S.A. 1979.
Kierkegard, S., “The Concept of Irony, with Constant Reference to Socrates”, 1841.
Thomson, J. A. K., “Irony: An Historical Introduction”, London, 1926.
Chevalier, H., “The Ironic Temper: Anatole France and his Time”, New York, 1932.
Sedgewick, G.G., “Of Irony, Especially in Drama”, 1935, 2nd ed., Toronto, 1948.
Birney, E., “English Irony Before Chaucer”, University of Toronto Quarterly, VI (July, 1937), p.p. 538 – 57.
Mann, T., “Die Kunst des Romans”, 1939, trans. as „The Art of The Novel“ in The Creative Vision, eds. Haskell M. Block and Herman Salinger, New York, 1960.
Worcester, D., “The Art of Satire”, Cambridge, Mass., 1940.
Thompson, A. R., “The Dry Mock, A Study of Irony in drama”, Berkeley, 1948.
Brooks, C., “Irony and Ironic Poetry”, College English, IX (1948), pp. 231 – 7, revised as “Irony as a Principle of Structure” for Literary Opinion in America, ed. Morton Zabel, New York, 1951.
Warren, R.P., “Pure and Impure Poetry”, in Critiques and Essays in Criticism, ed. R.W. Stalman, New York, 1949.
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