Of Irony, Especially in Drama

by G.G. Sedgewick

First published in 1935, as the Alexander Lectures at the University of Toronto, "Of Irony" has been in demand ever since. Professor Sedgewick begins his discussion by recognizing that irony is a way of speaking with which we are all familiar, a figure of speech used in daily conversation. But there are other ironies: those of allegory, of understatement, of detachment, of fate, and especially the irony used in drama. He explores how the various meanings of irony have developed--through Socrates, with his "urbane pretence," through Bacon, through the romantic irony of Schlegel and Tieck, through Bishop Thirlwall, whose essay on the irony of Socrates was pivotal in the history of English dramatic criticism. Now in its third edition, "Of Irony" remains a seminal work on the central role irony has played in tragedy from the time of the Greeks to the present.

118 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1948

Reviews

[Steve R]

I read this book in the mid 1970s while at university, but its central tenets have stayed with me ever since. The concept that an audience or reader can know more about the true nature of events transpiring in a story than the characters themselves is quite a simple description of the device. It can be used with telling effect by the writer of said story is a powerful and oft-repeated mechanism of enhancing the impact of all forms of literature. And especially, as the title of the work indicates, those written to be performed on a stage.

My favourite anecdote from the work arose from a production of Othello in which the presentation of Iago's machinations against the title character were so well developed that supposedly one distraught member of the audience rose to his feet and yelled out: 'You stupid black bastard, can't you see he's fooling you?!' Sedgewick's rather dry observation on this incident was that it obviously represented dramatic irony working too well!

Highly recommended.