ABSTRACT
With 1445 entries listed under “irony” in the MLA Bibliography for only a single decade, why might the world need yet another book about irony? And that listing tells just part of the story—the literary part: this topic has been tackled by scholars in fields as diverse as linguistics and political science, sociology and history, aesthetics and religion, philosophy and rhetoric, psychology and anthropology. Irony has been located and explicated in literature, the visual arts, music, dance, theater, museum displays, conversation, philosophical argumentation, and the list could go on and on. Even granted that most of those 1445 entries are for articles about “irony in…” some text or artist’s oeuvre, the sheer amount of energy expended in trying to figure out how and why people choose to express themselves in this bizarre way remains astonishing to me. There seems to be a fascination with irony—one that I obviously share— whether it be regarded as a rhetorical trope or as a way of seeing the world.
