We saw in the last chapter that dialogic fiction has much in common
with irony. Not only do both involve the representation of dis-
courses, but both also make evident the limitations of the discourses
they represent. The diversity of discourses in a dialogic text empha-
sizes the limits of each monologic perspective but also shows how
these limits are transcended through dialogic interaction. And
while verbal irony--the rhetorical device in which the speaker
seems to express a certain point of view while tacitly deriding it--
treats the discourse it represents as an object to which a derogatory
attitude is adopted, epistemological irony acknowledges the
intrinsically flawed nature of all language and its inadequacy to the
speaking subject even as he attempts to articulate this insight. Here,
too, transcendence of the limits of expression is a function of the dia-
logic reception of the ironic text.

That irony permeates all of Nathalie Sarraute's work has been
noted in passing by several critics and explored in some detail by a
few ( Racevskis 1977; Minogue 1987a). Generally, the focus has been
on local instances of verbal irony and their possible motivations,
rather than on ways in which the text might try to undermine the
authority of its own discourse. Thus for Karlis Racevskis, Sarraute's
irony is a vehicle of social criticism, specifically of the 'cultural
establishment' ( 1977: 37) which includes both the represented
readers and writers of her novels, and their real readers in so far as
these reflect their fictional counterparts. Valerie Minogue, on the
other hand, sees Sarraute's use of irony as inseparable from the
project of articulating the prelinguistic tropism, for 'l'utilité de
l'ironie c'est [. . . ] de suggérer sans définir' ( 1987a: 8).

The aspect of irony which concerns me in relation to Nathalie
Sarraute's work is how, beyond simply illustrating the expressive
inadequacy of conventional language (whether another's or the
ironist's own), it simultaneously indicates that dialogue can over-
come that inadequacy. Irony, whether verbal or epistemological,
actively acknowledges the interlocutor's importance, for its critical

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