Re: BHA: Irony (fwd)

[Spoon Collective <spoons@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 26 May 1998 12:00:20 -0400 (EDT)
From: MSPRINKER@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
To: owner-bhaskar@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: BHA: Irony


               State University of New York at Stony Brook
                       Stony Brook, NY 11794-3355

                                            Michael Sprinker
                                            Professor of English & Comp Lit
                                            Comparative Studies
                                            516 632-9634
                                            26-May-1998 11:56am EDT
FROM:  MSPRINKER
TO:    Louis Irwin                          ( _owner-bhaskar@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx )

Subject: RE: BHA: Irony

Dear Louis,

What you are missing is all the complexity of irony as a trope,
which cannot be controlled in the way someone like Wayne Booth
thinks it can.  My various interventions thusfar have all been
aimed at illustrating this point.  The point is that the context
never does, finally and definitively, make it clear whether the
utterance is to be taken seriously or not.  If irony depends only
on the (clearly marked) intentions of the speaker, and all
speakers are honest, then no problem, but neither of these conditions
much obtains even in ordinary discursive exchange, despite our
best efforts to make it so.

Cheers,

Michael



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