ABSTRACT
Most of the theoretical treatises on the concept of irony have their roots in the nineteenth century, particularly in the philosophical writings of Friedrich Schlegel and Soren Kierkegaard. The first methodological analysis of irony, Soren Kierkegaard's The Concept of Irony, explicitly posed the problem of irony's double nature. Thus irony as stimulus dissimulates one meaning by openly stating another in order to ridicule and debase. Irony as terminus is related to ethical as well as aesthetic questions, all dealing with the endless process of nullification that brings the ironist to the edge of an infinite void of consciousness, often resulting in existential dizziness and feelings of vertigo. The absurdity that lies in the concept of a life of self-annihilation immediately relates irony to the comic. Sometimes the existential irony is expressed as an utmost simplicity, a sheer, direct acceptance of reality.
