ABSTRACT
Rhetoricians have defined the term innumerable times, mostly offering variations upon Cicero's aliud dicere ac sentias saying one thing and meaning another. Compounding the problem of definition, a seeker after irony learns that the varieties of irony can be broken down into further classifications and subdivisions: the "ironologi st" D.C. Muecke, for instance, defines irony according to effect, medium, technique, function, object, practitioner, tone, and attitude. The question of how even to study and to talk about irony has become a subject of inquiry unto itself. The evolution of irony, then, from the classical to the Romantic period represented a shift of emphasis from words as objects to speakers as subjects. Irony becomes then a textual mechanism that somehow inherently and automatically reverses itself, if only the reader will take notice. Irony's interplay between detachment and implication can perhaps be best introduced by way of a discussion of representational art.
