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Read complete books and articles on: Irony

Irony - figure of speech in which what is stated is not what is meant. The user of irony assumes that his reader or listener understands the concealed meaning of his statement. Perhaps the simplest form of irony is rhetorical irony, when, for effect, a speaker says the direct opposite of what she means. Thus, in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, when Mark Antony refers in his funeral oration to Brutus


12 of the Best Books and Articles on: Irony

as selected by Questia librarians
  1. 1.


    Irony » Read Now

    by Claire Colebrook. 195 pgs.

    Collections: Literature, Entire Library
    In this handy volume, Claire Colebrook offers an overview of the history and structure of irony, from Socrates to the present.Students will welcome this clear, concise guide, which:*traces the use of the concept through history, from Greek times to the Romantic period and on to the postmodern...
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    Irony's Edge: The Theory and Politics of Irony » Read Now

    by Linda Hutcheon. 248 pgs.

    Collections: Literature, Entire Library
    The edge of irony, says Linda Hutcheon, is always a social and political edge. Irony depends upon interpretation; it happens in the tricky, unpredictable space between expression and understanding. Irony's Edge is a fascinating, compulsively readable study of the myriad forms and the effects of...
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    The Rise and Fall of Irony, in World Literature Today » Read Now

    by Franco Marenco. 6 pgs.

    Collections: Literature, Entire Library
    ...The Rise and Fall of Irony By FRANCO MARENCO The end of the millennium...Voltaires and not Manzonis, and that the irony was directed not to the bard but to his...it natural...
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    Age of Irony, in The American Prospect » Read Now

    by Jedediah S. Purdy. 7 pgs.

    Collections: Entire Library
  5. 5.


    Rhetoric and Irony: Western Literacy and Western Lies » Read Now

    by C. Jan Swearingen. 323 pgs.

    Collections: Philosophy, Entire Library
    This pathbreaking study integrates the histories of rhetoric, literacy, and literary aesthetics up to the time of Augustine, focusing on Western concepts of rhetoric as dissembling and of language as deceptive that Swearingen argues have received curiously prominent emphasis in Western aesthetics...
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    On Our Mind: Salience, Context, and Figurative Language (Chap. 4 "Irony") » Read Now

    by Rachel Giora. 259 pgs.

    Collections: Psychology, Entire Library
    How do we learn to produce and comprehend non-literal language? Competing theories have only partially accounted for the variety of language comprehension evoked in metaphor, irony, and jokes. Rachel Giora has developed a novel and comprehensive theory, the Graded Salience Hypothesis, to explain...
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    The Word Irony and Its Context, 1500-1755 » Read Now

    by Norman Knox. 258 pgs.

    Collections: Entire Library
    ...THE WORD IRONY AND ITS CONTEXT, 1500-1755 THE WORD IRONY AND ITS CONTEXT, 1500-1755 NORMAN KNOX DUKE UNIVERSITY...Foundation. PREFACE In the last century and a half the...
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    Talk Is Cheap: Sarcasm, Alienation, and the Evolution of Language ("Sarcasm and Irony" begins on p. 20) » Read Now

    by John Haiman. 222 pgs.

    Collections: Philosophy, Entire Library
    Putting aside questions of truth and falsehood, the old 'talk is cheap' maxim carries as much weight as ever. Indeed, perhaps more. For one need not be an expert in irony or sarcasm to realize that people don't necessarily mean what they say. Phrases such as 'Yeah, right' and 'I could care less' are...
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    Total Speech: An Integrational Linguistic Approach to Language ("Irony" begins on p. 207) » Read Now

    by Michael Toolan. 346 pgs.

    Collections: Philosophy, Entire Library
    ...Publishing Inc.; and as "On Recyclings and Irony," in Literature and the New Interdisciplinarity...theorizing about literal meaning, metaphor, irony, repetition, "bad"...
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    A Grammar of Motives (Discussion of irony begins on p. 511) » Read Now

    by Kenneth Burke. 530 pgs.

    Collections: Philosophy, Entire Library
    ...human situation" and what men are "in themselves." Whereas there is an implicit irony in the other notions of substance, with the dialectic substance the irony is explicit...
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    Feminist Alternatives: Irony and Fantasy in the Contemporary Novel by Women » Read Now

    by Nancy A. Walker. 224 pgs.

    Collections: Literature, Entire Library
    This analytical survey of contemporary fiction is a study of more than twenty-five novels written by women during a twenty-year period of rapid socio-cultural change resulting from the philosophy & goals of the contemporary women's movement. Winner of the 1990 Eudora Welty Prize.

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  • Type your specific word or phrase in the box above after the word and, then click Search.
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