Pâmela Rodrigues Scutari Irony and Reader in The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis São José do Rio Preto 2020 Câmpus de São José do Rio Preto Pâmela Rodrigues Scutari Irony and Reader in The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis Dissertação apresentada como parte dos requisitos para obtenção do título de Mestre em Letras, junto ao Programa de Pós-Graduação em Letras, do Instituto de Biociências, Letras e Ciências Exatas da Universidade Estadual Paulista “Júlio de Mesquita Filho”, Câmpus de São José do Rio Preto. Financiadora: CAPES Orientador: Prof. Dr. Peter James Harris São José do Rio Preto 2020 S437i Scutari, Pâmela Rodrigues Irony and Reader in The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis / Pâmela Rodrigues Scutari. -- São José do Rio Preto, 2020 120 p. : il. Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual Paulista (Unesp), Instituto de Biociências Letras e Ciências Exatas, São José do Rio Preto Orientador: Peter James Harris 1. Literatura britânica. 2. Crítica e interpretação. 3. Cristianismo e literatura. 4. Ironia. 5. Escritores e leitores. I. Título. Sistema de geração automática de fichas catalográficas da Unesp. Biblioteca do Instituto de Biociências Letras e Ciências Exatas, São José do Rio Preto. Dados fornecidos pelo autor(a). Essa ficha não pode ser modificada. Pâmela Rodrigues Scutari Irony and Reader in The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis Dissertação apresentada como parte dos requisitos para obtenção do título de Mestre em Letras, junto ao Programa de Pós-Graduação em Letras, do Instituto de Biociências, Letras e Ciências Exatas da Universidade Estadual Paulista “Júlio de Mesquita Filho”, Câmpus de São José do Rio Preto. Financiadora: CAPES Comissão Examinadora Prof. Dr. Peter James Harris UNESP – Câmpus de São José do Rio Preto Orientador Prof. Dr. João Luís Cardoso Tápias Ceccantini UNESP – Câmpus de Assis Prof. Dr. Alvaro Luiz Hattnher UNESP – Câmpus de São José do Rio Preto São José do Rio Preto 13 de julho de 2020 For my mom, whose sense of humour has modelled me as self, and for my dad, who has been benefitted by my jokes. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am grateful to God, Who provided all emotional, academic and financial support that I have needed throughout these years, by means of these people and institutions: my parents, Paulo and Emília, who encouraged me to study at UNESP in the first place, and have been supportive throughout my academic journey; my brothers, Daniel and Pedro, who bore my lacking sense of humour when I was unable to be with them; my husband, Allan, who listened to each stream of thought during our long-distance conversations, kept reminding me of the progress of this study, and was understanding when it demanded time; my friends, especially João Pedro and Adriana, who helped this dissertation get to its destination; Dr. Cleide Rapucci, who accepted to supervise, between 2015 and 2016, the first steps of this research during my undergraduate studies; Drs. Peter Schakel, John North, David Clare, Hsiu-Chin Chou, Don Nilsen, Terry Lindvall and Joel Heck, who shared their work and other sources with me; Professors Drs. Orlando Amorim, Marize Dall’Aglio-Hattnher, Claudia Nigro, Giséle Fernandes and Alvaro Hattnher, who made enlightening observations for the development and conclusion of this study; coworkers at elementary school “Governador Mário Covas” in Álvaro de Carvalho, who were welcoming at my new job as an English teacher, and made the continuance of my tasks as a graduate student easier in 2019; São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP), which financially supported my undergraduate research in 2016 (process number 2015-21059-9); Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES), which financially supported my graduate studies between 2018 and 2019; and my advisor, Professor Dr. Peter James Harris, who agreed to supervise my work, encouraged me to write it in English language, provided all academic support, and inspired the analogy which demonstrates the results of this research. This study was financed in part by the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - Brasil (CAPES) - Finance Code 001. “The person who doesn’t read lives only one life. The reader lives 5,000. Reading is immortality backwards.” Umberto Eco RESUMO Este estudo analisa a interação interpretativa entre ironia e leitor na ficção satírica The Screwtape Letters, de C. S. Lewis. Partimos do nível afetivo da ironia presente nas cartas do demônio Screwtape, e utilizamos as noções de cooperação interpretativa e funções da ironia de, respectivamente, Umberto Eco e Linda Hutcheon, para, então, discutir a hipótese de que a inversão irônica que estrutura a obra de Lewis não apenas veicula ideias consideradas importantes, em tempos de guerra, pelo autor, mas também gera seu efeito cômico. Assim, a análise de elementos textuais e contextuais que a constituem e refletem a fé cristã e criatividade ficcional de C. S. Lewis revelam que, uma vez que a inversão irônica é inferida e avaliada pelo leitor a partir de seus movimentos cognitivos e do grau de afetividade em relação às funções irônicas daquela, The Screwtape Letters tem proporcionado uma perspectiva Cristã (por meio de inversão) e fruição literária à comunidade leitora de C. S. Lewis desde sua publicação semanal. Palavras-chave: Interpretação da ironia. Sátira religiosa. Literatura e Cristianismo. Recepção literária. ABSTRACT This study analyses the interpretive interplay between irony and reader in satirical fiction The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis. It parts from senior devil Screwtape’s affective level of irony and uses Umberto Eco’s and Linda Hutcheon’s notions of, respectively, interpretive cooperation and functions of irony to discuss the hypothesis that ironic inversion functions as a structured whole in Lewis’s work, in the sense that it not only conveys religious ideas regarded as important in wartime by the author, but also raises its comic effects. Thus, the analysis of textual and contextual elements which constitute it and reflect C. S. Lewis’s Christian faith and fictional creativity will reveal that, once ironic inversion is inferred and evaluated by the reader from his/her cognitive movements and degree of affectivity in relation to its ironical functions, The Screwtape Letters has provided a Christian perspective in reverse as well as literary enjoyability to C. S. Lewis’s community of readers since its weekly publication. Keywords: Interpretation of irony. Religious satire. Literature and Christianity. Reader reception. LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1 – Roles and messages from Douglas C. Muecke 21 Figure 2 – The functions of irony from Linda Hutcheon 35 Figure 3 – Satirical victims in The Screwtape Letters 99 Figure 4 – Functions of Irony in The Screwtape Letters 103 SUMMARY 1 INTRODUCTION 11 2 IRONY AND READER 16 2.1 An Introduction to Irony 16 2.2 The Reader of an Ironic Work 28 2.3 Irony and Reader in (Religious) Satire 39 3 C. S. LEWIS, IRONY AND READER 47 3.1 C. S. Lewis: The Critic, the Fictionist, the Apologist 47 3.2 The Screwtape Letters 57 3.2.1 Context, Publication and Reception 58 3.2.2 Devilish Plot, Characterisation and Style 61 3.2.3 Ironic Inversion: From Satire to Apologetics 73 4 IRONY AND READER IN THE SCREWTAPE LETTERS 79 4.2 An Interpretive Walk Through the Letters 79 4.2 Levels of Irony and the Role of the Reader 98 4.3 Functions of Irony: The Reader’s Evaluation 101 5 CONCLUSION 111 REFERENCES 115 11 1 INTRODUCTION This study was born out of my first experience in reading satirical, epistolary fiction The Screwtape Letters (1942) by C. S. Lewis. Undersecretary Screwtape’s advisory letters and arrogant and satirical tone towards an Englishman, religion and his nephew, the junior tempter Wormwood, have motivated this study in these senses: since Screwtape is a devil, how is he able to make the reader laugh in spite of his uttering of truths about the essence of humankind and religion in his satirising the Patient, and have him/her optionally regard those as corrective?; and, once the reader has realised the contradiction in Screwtape’s letters, how can the senior devil be self- deprecated by scorn which does not seem to have himself as a target? Critics have argued that reading experiences which may allow questions such as these are only possible through interpreting the ironic inversion which underpins C. S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters. Since it requires a double interpretation of the senior devil Screwtape’s ironical utterances for religious and contextual purposes, a double- edged irony can then be elicited, to the extent that there may be multiple interpretations – from disguise to comedy or morality – and multiple targets of those utterances (Schakel, “The Satiric Imagination of C. S. Lewis”; Chou, “The Devil in Disciplines”).1 As the act of reading and interpreting irony in the Letters cannot be one-sided – from the ironist’s point of view only –, the present study focuses on the irony of the work, which enables us to raise these and other questions, as well as on the reader’s walk as an interpreter and his/her level of empathy towards the double-edged irony applied to the Letters – which can also take him/her as a target. The study is therefore divided into three chapters: my theoretical discussion, “Irony and Reader”; an introduction and contextualisation, “C. S. Lewis, Irony and Reader”; and, finally, my analysis, “Irony and Reader in The Screwtape Letters”. Chapter two, “Irony and Reader”, begins with an “Introduction to Irony”. The Greek root of irony early characterises eironeia as a mode of behaviour or figure of speech, which is to say, dissimulation, and praising to blame or blaming to praise, respectively; while the Latin ironia, in its turn, was used as a rhetorical figure by Roman writer Cicero and a strategy by Quintilian. Despite colloquial terms with derisive meanings which worked as “embryonic irony” (Muecke, Irony and the Ironic 16), it was 1 The present study follows the norms set out in the MLA Handbook, Eighth Edition (2016). 12 only in 1502 that “irony” first appeared in English, and its meanings were developed throughout four stages which range from an ironic victim or an interpreter who can see the contradiction in circumstances, time or in life, to the idea that irony “activates not one but an endless series of subversive interpretations” (31). The former concept of irony as a “contrast of appearance and reality” (Muecke, Irony and the Ironic 33) may be incomplete, since it seems to imply something more through indirection or contradiction. In fact, history and the development of the meanings of irony lead irony to be conceived of, in a literary work, as a structuring element (Brait 54) which contains an argumentative value through a reverse (117), meant to be interpreted by the reader from his/her “personal performance”2 (Eco, The Open Work 21, emphasis by the author). Accordingly, textual and contextual signals must be considered in the decoding of irony and in the reader’s performing its comical effects. Thus, the intrinsic argumentative value in an ironic work must vary in style, effects and, most importantly, interpretation. In this sense, the second part of my second chapter focuses on “The Reader of an Ironic Work”. As argued by Eco, the reader’s interpretation of a literary text happens at the level of the unsaid, through textual and contextual inferences (Lector in Fabula 36); by doing so, his/her interpretive cooperation confirms or builds him/her up as a textual strategy which puts the work into motion. Since that work is structured by irony, its argumentative value – intended by a Model Author – must be inferred as well being felt, because irony bares a transideology whose edges overcome the binary understanding of irony, that is, praising to blame or blaming to praise (Hutcheon, Irony’s Edge 38). As illustrated by Hutcheon in what I call her “temperature scale”, the functions of irony must be evaluated from the reader’s point of view (45): the degree of affection between him/her and the ironic text, and positive or negative charges may vary according to the ironical functions inferred by the reader. I highlight the functions of irony at the top of Hutcheon’s scale – namely, the Assailing and the Aggregative functions – in my final discussion in the second chapter of this study. 2 According to Eco, the reader is a performer of the text, in the sense that he/she is “bound to supply his [or her] own existential credentials, the sense conditioning which is peculiarly his [or her] own, a defined culture, a set of tastes, personal inclinations, and prejudices. Thus, his [or her] comprehension of the original artefact is always modified by his [or her] particular and individual perspective. In fact, the form of the work of art gains its aesthetic validity precisely in proportion to the number of different perspectives from which it can be viewed and understood” (The Open Work 3). Throughout the present study, the terms performer and to perform are utilised in the sense defined by Eco. 13 Subtopic “Irony and Reader in (Religious) Satire” firstly seeks to demonstrate the use of irony for pragmatic purposes from satirical tradition to contemporary satire – and, from this point, I deal with satire in its textual form, although it can also involve contemporary satires, such as satire shows on celebrities and politics, like Dead Ringers, broadcast on BBC Radio 4. According to Elliott, satirical tradition is early headed by poetry and orality, under the influence of Classical Greek Comedy’s picturing the ridiculous by means of iambic-metered invectives. In around 2000 B.C., in Ireland, the satires of poets called the filid had a public value in the sense that they granted or destroyed one’s honour – and even life – by means of bitter language. The Roman satire, in its turn, contributed to its structured metre and to the distinction between comical and tragical satires, noticeable in, respectively, Horace’s and Juvenal’s monologues. The power of satire can also be observed in late sixteenth- century England, when the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London prohibited the printing of satires and decreed the burning of those which had already been published. Thus, wit and irony have been useful in guaranteeing the acceptance of satire and the maintenance of its destructive and corrective functions, which is to say, to ridicule as well as to denounce the discrepancies between ideal and reality. Religious satirists have employed such devices since ancient times, when Hebrew prophets used their moral and spiritual vocation along with witty language to attack their targets (Lindvall, God Mocks 3). Considering that “no believer could jest about truth” (Highet 45) and there were, consequently, few satires in the Middle Ages, it is just before Reformation, with the publication of German Sebastian Brandt’s Das Narrenschiff, The Ship of Fools (1494), that religious satires began to be written and published again. Here, Lindvall emphasises a distinguishing feature in Brandt’s work which would influence the new trend in religious satirists: “A true satirist sits in the dock with those who are guilty and identifies as an integral member of the satirized community” (God Mocks 3). Indeed, the shipmate cannot prevent the religious satirist from conveying the truth by means of ironic language, which approaches the reader’s emotions, leading him/her to laughter or harm, and to correction. In fact, Hutcheon’s scale suggests that satiric irony is placed exactly where “a contemptuous bitter laugh is produced” (A Theory of Parody 56). Given the above, the third chapter of this study, “C. S. Lewis, Irony and Reader” focuses on C. S. Lewis (1898–1963) as a great satirist for both religious and non- religious readers in his ironical The Screwtape Letters. Lewis’s experiences as a 14 frontline soldier in the British Army in the Great War between 1917 and 1918; an atheist from youth until 1929; a practitioner Christian from 1931; and a writer of creative fiction since his childhood, enabled him to face World War II, along with British society and his religious community, and to share his faith and encourage his readers by means of devilish, humorous letters, published weekly in the Church of England’s magazine, The Guardian, from 2 May through to 28 November 1941. In Screwtape’s Letters, Lewis adapted his Christian faith and the context of the war during which the letters were written, and translated them into reversed irony, that is, through senior devil’s distorted point of view, which can only praise and support what favours Our Father Below and himself. Despite a negative reaction from some Oxford dons (McGrath, The Intellectual World of C. S. Lewis xi), the positive reception of the Letters by common readers reflects its value as a creative and well-articulated work (Huttar 90), and a religiously “symbolic” and joyfully allegorical work for those who did not share the ideals conveyed or inferred (Nilsen 174). Hence, international interest in Lewis’s successful work first turned him into a popular writer (Schakel, “The Satiric Imagination of C. S. Lewis” 138). In subtopic “Ironic Inversion: From Satire to Apologetics”, it will be pointed, from previous studies on the subject, that Screwtape’s devilish nature also contributes to the accomplishment of ironic inversion as a structuring element in The Screwtape Letters. Since senior devil not only utters “straightforward statements [which] are accurate summaries of Christian truths, expressions of what Lewis believed and regarded as important teaching” (Schakel, “The Satiric Imagination of C. S. Lewis” 139), but also inconsistent truths from a distorted and humourless perspective throughout the whole work, Screwtape’s scorn towards the Patient, religion and the junior tempter Wormwood does not exempt himself from being affected by it: supposedly superior to his targets, Screwtape becomes the victim of a double-edged irony (Chou, The Problem of Faith and the Self 96). In fact, the publication of the book- formatted editions of the Letters gave some light to its readers: epigraphs by Martin Luther and Thomas More which recommend that the devil be satirised, and a fictional preface by Lewis which warns the readers about the untrustworthy nature of the devil seem to serve as clues – along with many others throughout the work – for the readers to follow. Accordingly, the fourth chapter which entitles the present study, “Irony and Reader in The Screwtape Letters”, begins by taking “An Interpretive Walk Through the Letters”. In doing so, I do not aim to explain the reasons why Screwtape’s Letters may 15 be comical and/or apologetical for the reader, since these routes were already well traced by theorists such as Schakel (“The Satiric Imagination of C. S. Lewis”) and Chou (The Problem of Faith and the Self; “The Devil in Disciplines”). I rather aim to demonstrate, based upon my theoretical approach, how the Letters gradually select or build up the reader as a Model Reader by means of textual and contextual elements, to the extent that he/she will be able to make cooperative movements in Lewis’s satire to, then, (not) enjoy such an ironic work for its satirical effects and, optionally, use it as instruction. In this sense, in subtopic “Levels of Irony and the Role of Reader”, I elicit the affective and cognitive levels of irony in the Letters, by emphasising the role of the reader and his/her possible emotions in such a process, by means of the analogy of the work of releasing arrows towards an archery target illustrated in the “Satirical Victims in The Screwtape Letters” (Figure 3) – recognisable at both affective and cognitive levels of irony. Based upon a discussion of irony’s transideological edges and a concern on how the reader is affected by irony, that image is helpful in eliciting the “Functions of Irony” resulting from “the Reader’s Evaluation” of doubled-edged irony in The Screwtape Letters: as the reader’s viewpoint varies in his/her aiming at the archery target, so do the “Functions of Irony in The Screwtape Letters” (Figure 4), which is to say, positive and negative charges of the Assailing and Aggregative functions of irony. Finally, the concluding section of this study recapitulates the main points in my discussion of the interplay between irony and the reader in C. S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters. From the theoretical perspective presented in my second chapter, I present some other routes, possible interpretations of the work’s satirical meanings, and functions of irony by religious, non-religious, twentieth-century, contemporary and foreign readers – who constitute the community of readers of the ironical The Screwtape Letters. 16 2 IRONY AND READER a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, —Ecclesiastes 3:4 (NIV), The Holy Bible 2.1 An Introduction to Irony Before the literary use of the English word “irony”, the first recording of the Greek term euroneia was in Plato’s (428–347 BC) Republic, in which it “no longer meant straightforward lying, . . . but an intended simulation which the audience or hearer was meant to recognise” (Colebrook 6). This term and its equivalent, eiron, can also be found in works of other philosophers, namely, Socrates, who employed the former for “a smooth, low-down way of taking people in” (Muecke, Irony and the Ironic 15); Demosthenes, who believed an eiron was one who avoided citizenship responsibilities by the pretension of unfitness; Theophrastus, for whom an eiron was an evasive and insincere person to his/her friends and enemies; and Aristotle, who understood euroneia to be a “self-depreciative dissimulation” (16). These concepts imply that irony is basically a mode of behaviour. Unlike the Greek understanding of the word, the Roman writer Cicero recognised ironia as a rhetorical figure or, like Socrates, a “pervasive habit of discourse”, that is, a mode of behaviour in an argument; and, finally, Quintilian used it as a rhetorical strategy (15). The Greek concepts are closer to deception and pretence, whilst the Romans comprehended irony or ironia as both a mode of behaviour and a figure of speech that not only implied ‘blaming as praising’ and ‘praising as blaming’, but also a means of teaching (or learning) something, although another Latin word for irony, dissimulatio, reveals a closeness to its Greek meaning as well. Moreover, as will be demonstrated, irony can be associated to an alazon – the opposite of an eiron –, who had some “confident unawareness” (Muecke, Irony and the Ironic 37), and is a blind dissembler – commonly, to him/herself. Thus, roots of irony and its earliest concepts are to be found in its fundamental feature, “contrast[s] of appearance and reality” (33), and from ideas of a mode of behaviour (optionally, in an argument) and a rhetorical strategy. “Irony” first appeared in English in 1502, yet colloquial terms such as “fleer”, “flout”, “gibe”, “jeer”, “mock”, “scoff”, “scorn” and “taunt” work as “embryonic irony” in 17 verbal usages until irony became a general literary term at the beginning of the eighteenth century (Muecke, Irony and the Ironic 16). The concept has had a slow development in England and some other European countries; Cicero and Quintilian’s concepts of irony – a mode of behaviour in an argument and a rhetorical strategy –, whom “the most recognised definitions of irony came from” (Colebrook 8), were ignored until the first half of the eighteenth century. So, by then, irony had been simply considered to be a figure of speech. According to Muecke: The word was defined as ‘saying the contrary of what one means’, as ‘saying one thing but meaning another’, as ‘praising in order to blame and blaming in order to praise’, and as ‘mocking and scoffing’. It was also used to mean dissimulation, even non-ironical dissimulation, understatement, and parody (Irony and the Ironic 17). However, an exception must be made for Henry Fielding, who applied irony to a satirical strategy in 1748, by depicting a foolish character who supports a view that is condemned by the author; such self-betraying irony was only recognised in the twentieth century. Many a new meaning was attributed to irony in the late eighteenth and in the early nineteenth century. Muecke explains that, beyond the concept of intentionality and instrumentality – someone being able to realise a purpose in an ironical message by means of ironic language –, there is the possibility of irony occuring unintentionally, being observable and, consequently, being “representable in art” (Irony and the Ironic 19). The new meanings irony acquired during that period are, mainly (and most importantly), due to German philosophical and aesthetic speculation, conducted by “ironologists” of the time, Friedrich Schlegel, his brother, August Wilhelm Schlegel, Ludwig Tieck and Karl Solger. The first stage in the development of new meanings of irony made possible to see irony passively, not just actively – someone being ironic; this turns the focus of the word “ironic” from an “ironist” to an ironic victim, who may be either the butt of irony (an unsuspecting victim of certain events or circumstances) or one who cannot interpret it (an uncomprehending victim) (Muecke, Irony and the Ironic 20). A. W. Schlegel and Ludwig Tieck related this new concept to, respectively, Irony of Events and Situational Ironies in Shakespeare’s King Henry V (1599), given the inversion in time and the unawareness of some characters in the work. 18 The second stage takes place in the Romantic period. Brait defines Romantic Irony as “the means which art has to represent itself”3 (34), since man seeks unity and infinity in a finite world through human creation and human-to-human engagement (Colebrook 47). For Karl Solger, this contradiction is the centre of life, and results in self-destruction so that the universal and the infinite are achieved (Muecke, Irony and the Ironic 25). Friedrich Schlegel, in his turn, sensed that irony is the element which guarantees the author’s liberty of spirit; he established two contrary (though complementary) phases which demonstrate the artist’s ironic attitude towards his/her artistic creation: an expansive phase, in which the artist is “naïve, enthusiastic, inspired, imaginative”, yet also blind; and a contractive phase, in which he/she is “reflective, conscious, critical, ironic”, yet “dull or affected”, since irony has no “ardor” in that context (24). Colebrook points out that “Romantic irony therefore extends both irony and poetry to include all life and perception” (50). Only the reader will be able to realise the transcendent and ironic relationship between the artist and his/her creation (Muecke, Irony and the Ironic 25). That is why the second stage in the development of new concepts of irony represents a universalisation of local and particular ironies. Besides Instrumental Irony, it includes to its new concepts Observable Irony, that is, “things seen or presented as ironic” (22). Due to a confident unawareness or a lack of reflectiveness, here lies alazony and, hence, the alazon, who is thus the victim of irony of character; an Irony of Events, on the other hand, represents an “irony of fate, of circumstances, of time and of life”. In this sense, Karl Solger suggests Observable Irony may also arise out of an “unpromising but surprisingly” situation or event (29). Thus, Observable Irony expresses the concept of objectivity of irony, given its “non-one-sidedness” or the observation and interpretation of it by the reader. Brait points out, regarding this stage: the idea of contradiction, of duplicity as an essential feature of a means of discourse dialectically articulated; the detachment between what is said and what the enunciator intends should be understood; the expectation of the existence of a reader who can capture the purposely contradictory ambiguity in such a discourse (34, emphases by the author).4 3 “o meio que a arte tem para se auto-representar”. 4 a ideia de contradição, de duplicidade como traço essencial a um modo de discurso dialeticamente articulado; o distanciamento entre o que é dito e o que o enunciador pretende que seja entendido; a expectativa da existência de um leitor capaz de captar a ambiguidade propositalmente contraditória desse discurso. 19 Other concepts of irony had also been developed by the end of the nineteenth century. Conforming to Muecke (Irony and the Ironic 26-30), the idea of opposition – introduced by German Romanticism – was defended by I. A. Richards as a key to equilibrium; for Kiekargaard, as he stated in his Concept of Irony (1841), irony is part of spiritual development, and seen as an attitude; A. W. Schlegel argued that irony has a satiric and moral function; the Englishman, Connop Thirlwall, defined a new concept, Dramatic Irony, as “the irony of a character’s utterance having unawares a double reference” (Muecke, Irony and the Ironic 29); despite his nihilistic concept of irony, Heine recognised its self-protective function; and Hegel saw the universality of irony – along with its incompatibilities – as being dialectic. Finally, whereas the predominant concept of irony during the post-Romantic nineteenth century is nihilistic, it is relativistic in the twentieth century. Muecke explains: Irony in this latest sense is a way of writing designed to leave open the question of what the literal meaning might signify: there is a perpetual deferment of significance. The old definition of irony – saying one thing and giving to understand the contrary – is superseded; irony is saying something in a way that activates not one but an endless series of subversive interpretations (Irony and the Ironic 31). Thus, modern concepts of irony foresee an interpreter or one who can see something ironic as being necessary for it to happen at all. However, ancient meanings of irony contribute to understanding it as more than a process of contrast or a contradiction. Since euroneia could be a mode of behaviour in an argument, it was therefore considered to be a rhetoric figure. For Aristotle (1, 1355b 25), rhetoric is “the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion”, that is, a means of manipulating words, not persuasion itself. Corbett (20-21) explains that “The Greek words rhema (‘a word’) and rhetor (‘a teacher of oratory’), which are akin, stem ultimately from the Greek verb eiro (‘I say’)”. Irony is, thus, firstly rooted in discourse and the manipulation of words – which makes it closely related to Cicero’s concept of irony –, and rooted in “dissimulation and interrogation” (Hutcheon, A Theory of Parody 53). Besides, this art can be employed in different contexts and language forms, in which irony would work as a structuring element of the whole text (Brait 54) – such a concept of irony may remind us of Quintilian’s. Thus, to the idea of contrast, should be added that of manipulation of words in an ironic text so that there may be one or more interpretations by the reader, elicited through Eco’s concept of “inferential walks”, which is to say, interpretations “elicited by discursive structures and foreseen by the 20 whole textual strategy as indispensable components of the construction of the fabula” (Eco, The Role of the Reader 32). As demonstrated in the previous paragraph, the Greek roots of irony and Eco’s “inferential walks” justify the semantic and pragmatic functions of irony suggested by Hutcheon, which is why irony cannot be summarised as a contrast between an appearance and a reality alone (A Theory of Parody 53). Although it does have a semantic inversion such as praising in order to blame, Hutcheon explains that inversion can denote a judgment along with it – the pragmatic function of irony –, given the edges it bears (Irony’s Edge 63). Thus, more than dissimulation, irony functions “as both antiphrasis and as an evaluative strategy that implies an attitude of the encoding agent towards the text itself, an attitude which, in turn, allows and demands the decoder’s interpretation and evaluation” (Hutcheon, A Theory of Parody 53). Despite dealing with an ironic text formally, the pragmatic function of irony constitutes part of the interpretation process in the form of a response to the ironic message; without that, “it has only the sound of one hand clapping” (Muecke, Irony and the Ironic 39). When such a response is expected, irony, or, specifically, Instrumental Irony, works like a game, which is, consequently, supposed to be performed by two players – the author/ironist and the reader/interpreter, in the case of a literary text. This comparison serves to make the difference between irony and other deceptions clearer, and its definition does not seem simplistic: regarding irony, recognition, not reversal, is intended. For Eco, the text – not only an ironic text – is incomplete and lazy – even one which is apparently completed. Its complexity lies between unsaid and already said elements, so the text should be executed by the interpreter according to his/her “personal performance” (Lector in Fabula 35-37; The Open Work 21). Thus, as well as an ironic text carrying an unstated message, it is open to the reader’s interpretation, and invites him/her to its game, a literary text – a work of art which is open to the reader’s cooperation – functions as a game of recognition and response, considering it is: the end product of an author’s effort to arrange a sequence of communicative effects in such a way that each individual addressee can refashion the original composition devised by the author. The addressee is bound to enter into an interplay of stimulus and response which depends on his unique capacity for sensitive reception of the piece. In this sense the author presents a finished product with the intention that this particular composition should be appreciated and received in the same form as he devised it. As he reacts to 21 the play of stimuli and his own response to their patterning, the individual addressee is bound to supply his own existential credentials, the sense conditioning which is peculiarly his own, a defined culture, a set of tastes, personal inclinations, and prejudices. Thus, his comprehension of the original artifact is always modified by his particular and individual perspective (The Open Work 3). Eco’s ideas on the open work confirm the necessity for dealing with an ironic text formally – by the author, who arranges the ironic message so it is recognised – and pragmatically – by the reader, who follows the “inferential walks” within the text and executes it subjectively. Besides, since an ironic work is, primarily, a two-level message – semantically and pragmatically – which only occurs when and if the interpreter discerns the two levels, and since it may also be a work of art “to be completed” (Eco, The Open Work 19), its openness will be, consequently, doubly complex, inviting and challenging to the reader. As Booth points out, by following conventional formulae such as that of a figure of speech – based on the idea of contrast between an appearance and a reality –, “no great act of reconstruction is required” by the reader (34). Hence, it is conceivable to question who the “ironist” may be other than the author or, at least, consider the reader as a co-producer of the ironic text and an interlocutor of the ironic discourse (Hutcheon, Irony’s Edge 11; Brait 126). In this sense, Muecke suggests that there is more than one role and more than one message in coding and decoding an “irony-work” of Instrumental Irony, by which is meant “(a) the transformation of the real meaning or intent into the ironic message, e.g. blame transformed to seeming praise; (b) the establishment of the required degree of plausibility; (c) the provision of signals (if any)” (Irony and the Ironic 40-41). Muecke illustrates such a process through the following diagram: SOCIO-CULTURAL CONTEXT IRONIC TEXT LITERAL or PLAUSIBLE MESSAGE IN-TEXT WITH TEXT IN CONTEXT IRONIST TRANSLITERAL or REAL MESSAGE IMPERCEPTIVE AUDIENCE (ACTUAL) PERCEPTIVE AUDIENCE Imperceptive audience (implied) Naïf (implied) 22 Fig. 1. Roles and messages from: Muecke, Douglas C. Irony and the Ironic, London and New York, 1995, p. 40. Firstly, the author pretends him/herself to be naïf through a “literal or plausible message” so the text gets to an implicitly imperceptive audience; the butt of irony can be an object, the ironist or the audience. The ironic text may contain or be accompanied by some signals in the text through contradictions or exaggerations, that is, “expressions that are perceptibly inappropriate to or not required by the apparent content” (Muecke, “Irony Markers” 368); or by signals with the text by establishing a verbal context over the title, epigraphs or other prefatory clues so there is a shared context between the author and the reader; or by signals in a context upon which the ironist may optionally rely (Booth 53-55), “vary[ing] from a single fact to a whole socio- cultural environment, from what is known to or felt by the addressor and addressee alone to what is universally accepted” (Muecke, “Irony Markers” 367), that is, in a context where the ironist may count on his/her audience’s values to his/her coding and their decoding of irony, respectively. As stated by Colebrook, “Irony, even at its most obvious, is always diagnostic and political: to read the irony you do not just have to know the context; you also have to be committed to specific beliefs and positions within that context. Irony must be partial and selective” (11-12). Thus, it can be observed that the first part of the process of coding Instrumental Irony – a naïf ironist and a “literal or plausible message” with some signals – is primarily formal – as already discussed by reference to Eco and Hutcheon –, although with pragmatic intentions. The audience has the role of responding to the ironic message as an actual imperceptive or perceptive audience. A “transliteral or real message” cannot arrive at an actual imperceptive audience, and that is why, I argue, it does not happen – unless the actual imperceptive audience is also part of the text in the form of a character as a butt of irony, and there is a reader who interprets the ironic message conveyed by the ironist. In the case of a perceptive audience which can interpret the ironic text, that is due to their recognising textual and/or contextual signals along with the “literal or plausible message”, and due to their reversing of the real meaning intended by the ironist. Thus, Muecke’s diagram demonstrates that such a recognition and reversal of the ironic message works as a performance by the audience which is formally foreseen by the ironist, who “provides them with the means for arriving at it” as an author does in his/her work of art for his/her reader (Muecke, Irony and the Ironic 41). 23 Since Observable Irony is ready-made, it does not involve the complex process of Instrumental Irony, and complicity between the ironist and the audience can be afforded by the latter, whilst the former lacks intention. If the audience or the receiver of Instrumental Irony accepts one of its messages, literal or figurative, alone, the ironic text would not be interpreted nor would there be any effects such as humour, since ambiguity and duplicity are what constitute irony (Brait 107). The act of reading and interpreting irony is, then, linguistic and textual – because irony is conveyed through the text which carries textual and/or contextual signals –, and discursive – because the text counts on the cooperation of the reader, who must accept such an invitation by reading and attributing irony to an ambiguous and contradictory message from those elements which may be shared by the author and him/her, and from his/her own values (Brait 126, 138-39). However, both Instrumental Irony and Observable Irony imply a feeling of paradox, which is a result of the ambiguity of irony, and/or a feeling of liberation by the interpreter, whose pleasure would be to be aware of the contradiction underlying the ironic message/situation (Muecke, Irony and the Ironic 45-46). In his Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious (1905), Sigmund Freud relates an effect of irony – specifically of Instrumental Irony – to comedy, “probably because it [comic pleasure] stirs him [the hearer] into a contradictory expenditure of energy, which is at once recognized as being unnecessary” (qtd. in Muecke, Irony and the Ironic 46). Although Freud recognises that what I have presented as the semantic level of irony may raise different feelings in the interpreter, the reason why I do not completely agree with that statement is because it seems to be true for Observable Ironies, yet I believe that, just as Instrumental Irony is intended by the ironist, so may its effects – whether they be pleasure or harm. As will be demonstrated, this means that the ironist (or even the interpreter) may not recognise those effects as “unnecessary”, but as a result of the interpretation of an ironic message which contains an argumentative strategy and, therefore, value through reverse (Hutcheon, A Theory of Parody 55; Brait 117). Henri Bergson, on the other hand, proposes, in his collection of essays on Laughter (1911), the concept of interference of series, which is not exclusive to irony, yet also expresses its semantic function: “A situation is invariably comic when it belongs simultaneously to two altogether independent series of events and is capable of being interpreted in two entirely different meanings at the same time” (48, emphasis by the author). In other words, it is possible to obtain a comic effect “by transposing 24 the nature expression of an idea into another key” (61). Such a process can occur in irony, which turns out to be a trope, that is, “a deviation from the ordinary and principal signification of a word . . . a transference of meaning” (Corbett 427). In Instrumental Irony, this transposition is supposed to be made at a semantic level and, then, recognised: when the ironist sets up the ironic – ambiguous and contradictory – message by contrasting an appearance and a reality through textual and contextual elements, the interpreter can recognise these and perform the text, enjoying a feeling of paradox and liberation. Bergson states: Summing up the foregoing, then, there are two extreme terms of comparison, the very large and the very small, the best and the worst, between which transposition may be effected in one direction or the other. Now, if the interval be gradually narrowed, the contrast between the terms obtained will be less and less violent, and the varieties of comic transposition more and more subtle. The most common of these contrasts is perhaps that between the real and the ideal, between what is and what ought to be. Here again transposition may take place in either direction. Sometimes we state what ought to be done, and pretend to believe that this is just what is actually being done; then we have IRONY. Sometimes, on the contrary, we describe with scrupulous minuteness what is being done, and pretend to believe that this is just what ought to be done; such is often the method of HUMOUR. Humour, thus denned [sic], is the counterpart of irony. Both are forms of satire, but irony is oratorical in its nature, whilst humour partakes of the scientific. Irony is emphasised the higher we allow ourselves to be uplifted by the idea of the good that ought to be: thus irony may grow so hot within us that it becomes a kind of high-pressure eloquence (63, emphases added). The comic effects of Instrumental Irony only occur when the ironic message is performed by the interpreter, and the resulting pleasure – a feeling of liberation – may be given to the complicity between the ironist and the interpreter (Brait 69). Besides, since I partially disagree with Freud’s idea of pleasure as an unnecessary comic effect, Hutcheon proposes that effects such as emotions can be also foreseen by the author when encoding the text, and motivated in the reader in decoding and performing the text (A Theory of Parody 55). That is why Bergson’s interference of series seems pertinent to this study: comic effects can be foreseen in the semantic level of irony, in which there is the transposition of an expression to another key, which is performed at a pragmatic one. This process of foreseeing a given reaction is called ethos by Hutcheon: By ethos I mean the ruling intended response achieved by a literary text. The intention is inferred by the decoder from the text itself. In some ways, then, the ethos is the overlap between the encoded effect (as desired and intended by the producer of the text) and the decoded effect (as achieved by the decoder). Obviously, my use of the term ethos is not like Aristotle’s, but it is 25 closely related to his concept of pathos, that emotion with which the encoding speaker seeks to invest the decoding listener. An ethos, then, is an inferred intended reaction motivated by the test [sic] (55, emphasis added). Furthermore, comic effects vary since the features of irony are varied as well. Because the words “comic” and “liberation” suggest, respectively, “distance” (from the comic object) and “detachment” – which is the archetypical stance of irony –, Closed Irony is characterised by feelings of superiority, amusement and freedom; these symbolise the condition of “looking down from a position of superior power or knowledge” (Muecke, Irony and the Ironic 47) – probably shared between the ironist and the interlocutor, as suggested in the previous paragraph. On the other hand, an open, relative and paradoxical stance of irony, Open or Paradoxical5 Irony is indeed detached, though involved, and critical, though sympathetic and benevolent; this state of irony, “in a self-critical and relativist age . . . tends, as Kierkegaard and Booth have shown, to develop galloping relativism, from which it can be saved from on high, but more probably by the practical exigencies of life” (50). Classes and features of irony – Instrumental and Observable Ironies, and Closed and Open or Paradoxical Ironies – have been presented as the concepts of irony and their evolution have been discussed. Muecke outlines – and somewhat modifies – three criteria established by Knox6 which distinguish these classes based on sympathy, outcome and concept of reality: 1 Attitude towards the victim of the irony, ranging from a high degree of detachment to a high degree of sympathy or identification. 2 Fate of the victim: triumph or defeat. 3 Concept of reality: whether the ironic observer thinks of reality as reflecting his values or as hostile to all human values (Irony and the Ironic 51). Knox’s criteria also distinguish four other classes of Closed Irony, as outlined by Muecke: I Reality reflects observer’s values: 5 The word “paradoxical” was proposed by Knox (‘Irony’, Dictionary of the History of Ideas, Vol. II, 1973, 627). 6 Knox proposes, in fact, four variable factors in the classification of ironies: “(1) the field of observation in which irony is noticed; (2) the degree of conflict between appearance and reality, ranging from the slightest of differences to diametrical opposites; (3) an inherently dramatic structure containing three roles – victim, audience, author; (4) the philosophical-emotional aspect” (53). Modification by Muecke seems to merge Knox’s criteria 1 and 2 into a first criterion, and clarify criterion 4 in the second criterion listed by Muecke; criterion 3 may be implied, given the diagrams previously presented in his work. I have chosen to use Muecke’s scheme as it is sound and reviewed by theorists whose concepts I have used from the beginning of my study. 26 (a) ‘Comic irony [‘comic’ in the happy-ending sense] reveals the triumph of a sympathetic victim.’ (That his confidently gloomy expectations are defeated makes his situation comic in the ordinary sense as well.) (b) ‘Satiric irony reveals the defeat of an unsympathetic victim.’ II Reality hostile to all human values (defeat therefore inevitable): (c) ‘Tragic irony, sympathy for the victim predominates.’ (d) ‘Nihilistic irony, satiric detachment counterbalances or dominates sympathy, but a degree of identification always remains since [the observer] necessarily shares the victim’s plight.’ (Irony and the Ironic 51) Instrumental Irony can occur in (a) and (b), only, in the form of a figure of speech, that is, “blaming in order to praise” or vice versa, whilst Observable Irony can occur in all of them; that is further evidence that irony depends on its interpreter or observer in order for it to occur in the first place. Besides, Knox’s criteria distinguish Paradoxical Irony as being open or ambivalent, since it “counterbalances the tragic with the comic, or one limited point of view with another. This is the irony that joins ‘both-and’ to ‘neither- nor,’ refusing to resolve itself” (Knox 53). As has been set out above, there are different roles and sorts of signals in an ironic work, and there may also be complicity between the ironist and his/her interlocutor, a resulting pleasure and comic effects probably due to what Bergson calls interference of series, yet this does not explain why some different types of irony are more effective than others (Brait 75; Muecke, Irony and the Ironic 45-46; Bergson 48). Muecke points out some principles and factors which can determine that: the more economic in signals, and the wider the contrast between ideal/expected and reality and the investment of emotional capital in areas such as “religion, love, morality, politics and history”, along with its compositional, contradictory elements, the more effective irony will be (Irony and the Ironic 52, 55). It can then be noticed that Aristotle’s emotional appeal, that is, pathos, also forms part of an irony-work, and contributes to the idea of an ironic process whose semantic level – that of contrast – necessarily implies the pragmatic one, which has been explained from Hutcheon’s ethos (A Theory of Parody 55). Thus, an ironic text is effective as long as it carries a degree of disparity between its topics through textual elements, signals and an emotional approach, which assist co-operation by and cause effects on the reader. Brait points out that an ironic, literary text is not a work made up of isolated ironic sentences, but rather “a whole structured according to a formal principle” (37).7 I have argued that the Greek etymological relation between euroneia and rhetoric – which is 7 “um todo estruturado segundo um princípio formal”. 27 “the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion” through discourse (Aristotle, 1, 1355b 25) – may as well be related to an ironic work which functions as a structuring element of an entire literary text, since that is the work of an author/ironist who has a rhetorical strategy, as proposed by Quintilian with regard to irony (Brait 54). Brait explains that such a strategy is applied by means of the contradiction between two elements in the same proposition – like Bergson’s interference of series –, which has an argumentative value (117). I have also demonstrated Cicero’s association of irony to a mode of behaviour in an argument, so the relationship between irony and rhetoric and its importance to writing and interpreting a literary text is clear. If the use of irony in literature may be a rhetorical strategy which has an argumentative value through a reverse in structuring a whole text when employing the devices mentioned and aiming at the effects discussed, its purpose may be to denounce something or someone. Brait explains: The appliance of the ludic, the interference of series, the dialogue between discourses and texts are, in general, used with the purpose of a denunciation, a critique of attitudes which are detected, but not necessarily made explicit. It is often precisely such an appliance that will disclose an enunciator who, by setting up various speakers, incites a humour whose underlying elements update representations of a given mentality, values that are characteristic of a given moment or a given culture, even though . . . the last thing that matters is the author’s intention (46).8 Thus, the semantic and pragmatic functions of irony in a literary text lead us to the conclusion that Instrumental Irony implies evaluation, contrast, argumentation and cooperation. Firstly, an author adopts a rhetorical strategy for the development of an evaluative argumentation through the discrepancy between an appearance and a reality, and for eliciting the cooperation of the reader of the work and interpreter of the irony through “inferential walks” – so that the work is completed and irony can take place. Secondly, this textual cooperation and semantic interpretation bring about comic effects which may be also foreseen by means of textual elements of such a strategy over the reader/interpreter. Finally, the reader/interpreter evaluates the ironic work and 8 O recurso ao lúdico, a interferência de séries, o diálogo entre discursos e textos são, em geral, utilizados com a finalidade de denúncia, de crítica a atitudes entrevistas, mas não necessariamente explicitadas. Muitas vezes, é precisamente esse recurso que vai revelar um enunciador que, instaurando vários locutores, deflagra um humor cujas entrelinhas atualizam representações de uma dada mentalidade, valores característicos de um dado momento ou de uma dada cultura, ainda que . . . a última coisa a interessar seja a intenção do autor. 28 the evaluation implied along with the rhetorical strategy according to those textual elements and, also, his/her own cultural knowledge. Having focused on these four elements in general, and having demonstrated that the third part of the ironic process is that of the reader in evaluating the ironic work and its evaluation – just as it starts with an evaluation by the ironist –, I shall now focus on the cooperation and evaluation by the reader of an ironic work. 2.2 The Reader of an Ironic Work I have argued that irony can structure a whole text for the purpose of argumentation by means of a rhetorical strategy, and that the interpreter has an active role in the interpretation process. Since it is a work of art, which is both closed and open, the literary text expects to be interpreted and performed by the reader, and to have “countless different interpretations which do not impinge on its unadulterable specifity” (Eco, The Role of the Reader 49). Besides, actualisation9 of the text, interpretation and cooperative movements by the reader should happen at the level of the “unsaid”, so linguistic knowledge would not be the only competence needed in the act of reading and interpreting (Eco, Lector in Fabula 36). Thus, the work of art structured by an ironic message – two-levelled in its essence – tends to be even more challenging and demanding for the reader/interpreter, since it not only counts on his/her cooperation and interpretation, but also on his/her evaluation, given the emotional appeal and evaluative feature on its pragmatic level. Until the 1960s, reception aesthetics or reception theories were developed as a reaction to structuralism – whose methodologies were limited to the objectivity of the linguistic object, which, in their turn, were prone to a debate on the abstraction of various extratextual factors – and to sociological approaches supported by empiricism (Eco, The Limits of Interpretation 4). Based on C. S. Peirce’s concept of unlimited semiosis, that is, “The interpretant of a sign becomes in turn a sign, and so on ad infinitum”, Eco developed the theory of the Model Reader, which will be used, for the purposes of the present study, to elucidate the act of reading and performing an ironic work (35-36). 9 By reference to Eco, this term is employed in the sense of the reader’s decoding the meaning-contents of a text and filling in its gaps. 29 As previously mentioned, active, conscious, cooperative movements by the reader are expected in his/her decoding and performing the text, since its actualisation is not given on the surface, but on the level of the unsaid (Eco, Lector in Fabula 36). Hence, these cooperative movements can differ according to the type of text the reader is dealing with, whether it is open or closed, as Eco suggests: Those texts that obsessively aim at arousing a precise response on the part of more or less precise empirical readers . . . are in fact open to any possible ‘aberrant’ decoding. A text so immoderately ‘open’ to every possible interpretation will be called a closed one (The Role of the Reader 8). The closed text, which is open – in the sense of an open work – to various interpretations and does not postulate “precise responses” nor empirical readers, is of interest to the present study and a key in the development of Eco’s theory, so it will be called “text” hereafter. For Eco, it is a strategy whose execution is that which generates the text itself during the reader’s performance: Let us say that the text postulates the reader’s cooperation as its own condition of actualisation. It is better to say that the text is a product whose interpretive destination is supposed to be part of its own generative mechanism. Generating a text means executing a strategy which includes forecasts of the movements of others – like any other strategy in fact . . . in a text, the author usually wants the adversary to win, rather than to lose. But this is not said (Lector in Fabula 39, emphasis added).10 In order to decode the text by filling in, through an “inferential walk”, its gaps intentionally and strategically left by the author, the reader is supposed to have some competences, linguistic and circumstantial, which are foreseen in the text (Eco, Lector in Fabula 39), yet used or built up to fill the gaps with “intertextual support” (The Role of the Reader 32), that is, outside the text. Such a textual strategy is the reason why sender and addressee must be considered, in this sense, as “‘actantial roles’ of the sentence” (10), which is to say, a Model Author and a Model Reader, respectively. If, on the one hand, the latter can be presupposed and selected from competences according to “the choice of a language . . . the choice of a type of encyclopedia . . . signs of genre which select their audience . . . the geographic field” (Eco, Lector in 10 Dissemos que o texto postula a cooperação do leitor como condição própria de atualização. Podemos dizer melhor que o texto é um produto cujo destino interpretativo deve fazer parte do próprio mecanismo gerativo. Gerar um texto significa executar uma estratégia de que fazem parte as previsões dos movimentos de outros – como, aliás, em qualquer estratégia . . . num texto, o autor costumeiramente quer levar o adversário a vencer, ao invés de perder. Mas isto não é dito. 30 Fabula 40)11, on the other hand, “a well-organized text . . . works to build up, by merely textual means, such a competence” (Eco, The Role of the Reader 8). Postulated as a textual strategy, the performance of the Model Reader, selected and/or built up, is what determines the text’s success in its complete actualisation (Eco, Lector in Fabula 45), yet saying “that every text designs its own Model Reader . . . [implies] that many texts aim at producing two Model Readers, a first level, or a naïve one, supposed to understand semantically what the text says, and a second level, or critical one, supposed to appreciate the way in which the text says so” (Eco, The Limits of Interpretion 55). Eco exemplifies some “pragmatical devices”, such as an “interplay of perlocutionary and illocutionary signals, displayed all along the discursive surface”, in the process of building up a Model Reader as an interpretive strategy in Alphonse Allais’s Un drame bien parisien (1890): Grammatically speaking, the text is dominated by a first person (the narrator) who at every step reiterates the fact that someone is reporting (tongue in cheek) events that are not necessarily to be believed; in other words, these interventions of the first grammatical person are stipulating a mutual contract of fair distrust . . . (The Role of the Reader 206-07, emphases added) The image of a Model Author, however, is formulated by the empirical reader, whose hypothesis is given from the textual strategy he/she was able to perform. Eco observes that such a hypothesis turns out to be “more guaranteed” than that of the Model Reader formulated by the author, since the latter is supposed to produce the image and an interpretive strategy for the Model Reader by means of the text, whilst the former can make deductions from what already exists in it (Lector in Fabula 46). Thus, these actantial roles must be considered as textual strategies, since both are possibly present in the enunciation. In this sense, any intentions which can be recognised in an open work, during the formulation of hypotheses from the reader’s knowledge, are intended by the text or Model Author, lest the empirical reader interpret it by relying on the information about the empirical author only (Eco, The Limits of Interpretation 59; Lector in Fabula 46). Nonetheless, such “an oriented insertion into . . . the world intended by the author” is foreseen in the formulation of hypotheses regarding the Model Reader and his/her 11 “a escolha de uma língua . . ., a escolha de um tipo de enciclopédia . . . sinais de gênero que selecionam a audiência . . . o campo geográfico”. 31 pragmatic response (Eco, The Role of the Reader 62) – intended by the empirical author before both Model Reader and Model Author become textual strategies: We can say that, in setting up a fictional text, its author formulates many hypotheses and forecasts apropos of the pragmatic behavior of his Model Reader. But this is a matter of the author’s intentions. These intentions can be extrapolated from the text . . . but they are intentions, wishes, projects belonging to the ‘actual’ world and to this actual speech act which is the text (Eco, The Role of the Reader 246, emphases added). Thus, the pragmatic behaviour that occurs during the interpretive cooperation is stimulated conforming to the competence intentionally selected or built up by the author, yet it does not mean that such intentions, belonging outside the text, do not matter. In fact, these intentions are performed within the text afterwards. According to Eco, there are three sorts of intention, intentio auctoris, intentio operis and intentio lectoris, which have a dialectical relationship among each other, recalling the “hermeneutic circle” (The Limits of Interpretation 50, 59). Since the intentio operis, that is, the intention of the text, works to build up textual strategies such as Model Reader and Author for its own interpretation, the intentio lectoris takes place as interpretive conjectures by the reader which may or may not be approved by the coherence of the text; as Eco points out, “It is possible to speak of text intentions only as the result of a conjecture on the part of the reader” (148). Besides, as I have mentioned, the intentio auctoris or the intention of the author is produced by the text by means of a Model Author as a textual strategy, so intentio operis and intentio auctoris seem to concur. Thus, an empirical reader – whose knowledge and other competences contribute to interpreting the text – makes conjectures about the intentions of the text and responds to these, depending on the chosen strategies. In such a complex process of coding and decoding the text and its pragmatic intentions by means of textual strategies, a more challenging type of text, the ironic one, also functions according to a structuring and strategic principle, which is irony. Brait explains that the principle of contradiction or opposition of irony as a semantic inversion and, hence, a two-levelled enunciation, “governs the definition of time, space and characters”12 of the text (119). This means that the interpretive cooperation of the ironic work is expected to be more complex than a non-ironic text, and, because of that, presupposes a “relationship of connivance” between author and reader in a given 12 “rege a instauração do tempo, do espaço e das personagens”. 32 context, as demonstrated in Muecke’s diagram on coding and decoding an ironic work (Brait 120; Muecke, Irony and the Ironic 40). Such a relationship of connivance is established through textual strategies which select or build up specific competences for the interpretation of the text, such as encyclopedic and ideological ones (Eco, Lector in Fabula 40): encyclopedic, because of the context in which irony, through language, occurs, that is, the reader “must, in short, have not only a knowledge of the texts but also a knowledge of the world, of circumstances external to the texts” (Eco, The Limits of Interpretation 89); and ideological, because, in conveying irony to a community of readers who are able to interpret it, the author can produce “a crisis and to induce the reader to specify more complex actantial and ideological structures” (Eco, Lector in Fabula 154).13 Brait explains that the reader’s response to those strategies sets up intersubjectivity in this process: The content, therefore, will be subjectively marked by values attributed by the enunciator, but presented so the participation of the receptor is required, as well as his/her perspicacity towards the enunciate and its signs, sometimes extremely subtle. Such a participation sets up intersubjectivity, presupposing not only shared knowledge, but also points of view and personal values shared culturally and socially or even constituting a collective imagination. It is the discursive-textual organisation that allows this calling of attention to the enunciate and especially to the subject of the enunciation (138-39, emphases added).14 Hutcheon suggests that this sharing and consequent interpretation or inference of irony is only possible because of the existence of “discursive communities”, which are “those different worlds to which each of us differently belongs and which form the basis of the expectations, assumptions, and preconceptions that we bring to the complex processing of discourse, of language in use” (Irony’s Edge 85). She adds that “it is precisely the mutual contexts that an existing community creates that set the scene for the very use and comprehension of irony” (87). Thus, since irony is understood as a “‘performative’ happening” of its two levels – semantic and pragmatic –, the ironic text foresees a discursive community for such a process (117). According 13 “uma crise e induzir o leitor a especificar estruturas actanciais e ideológicas mais complexas”. 14 “O conteúdo, portanto, estará subjetivamente assinalado por valores atribuídos pelo enunciador, mas apresentados de forma a exigir a participação do enunciatário, sua perspicácia para o enunciado e suas sinalizações, por vezes extremamente sutis. Essa participação é que instaura a intersubjetividade, pressupondo não apenas conhecimentos partilhados, mas também pontos de vista, valores pessoais ou cultural e socialmente comungados ou, ainda, constitutivos de um imaginário coletivo. É a organização discursivo-textual que vai permitir esse chamar a atenção sobre o enunciado e, especialmente, sobre o sujeito da enunciação”. 33 to Hutcheon, irony’s “identifying rhetorical nature lies in its indirection, as well as its edge. This is why not only context but discursive community figures in the comprehension of irony markers” (146). This reveals an indirect argumentative value and an evaluative attitude which are intrinsic to the ironic text. Intention is present anyway, whether in its encoding by the ironist/author, or in its interpretation/attribution by the interpreter/reader or both (Hutcheon, Irony’s Edge 113): by means of opposition (Brait 119) – the semantic level of irony –, the author can convey an ironic message which evaluates something or someone – the pragmatic level of irony – and, by means of textual strategies, can guarantee that his/her Model Reader will infer it and be affected by feelings and emotions which are result from irony, such as laughter and/or harm (Hutcheon, A Theory of Parody 55). Although an ironic text seems precisely to involve the interpretive cooperation process of an open work, it also seems that its underlying evaluation implies a relationship of affectivity between author and Model Reader, who, from his/her interpretation, will evaluate the elements applied afterwards, according to those feelings or emotions (Hutcheon, Irony’s Edge 35). Thus, the difference between an open work and an ironic one is the latter’s double complexity in that “hermeneutic circle” and double response, that is, cooperative and evaluative, by the reader (Eco, The Limits of Interpretation 59). In this sense, the second part of this chapter regarding the role of the interpreter in performing an ironic work through reading relies upon his/her evaluation of it according to the effects of irony on him/her. As mentioned on the levels of irony, in addition to its humoristic effects an ironic work can produce in the receptor of the interference of series which constitutes the semantic level of irony, the pragmatic one – evaluative – affects the reader by means of its edges, as proposed by Hutcheon: Unlike metaphor or metonymy, irony has an edge; unlike incongruity or juxtaposition, irony can put people on edge; unlike paradox, irony is decidedly edgy. While it may come into being through the semantic playing off of the stated against the unstated, irony is a ‘weighted’ mode of discourse in the sense that it is asymmetrical, unbalanced in favor of the silent and the unsaid. The tipping of the balance occurs in part through what is implied about the attitude of either the ironist or the interpreter: irony involves the attribution of an evaluative, even judgmental attitude, and this is where the emotive (Meyers 1974: 173) or affective dimension also enters (Irony’s Edge 35). Hutcheon notices that the edges of irony make its functions much more complex than that binary comprehension of praising or blaming something or someone by 34 means of the opposite, and that these cannot only be interpreted, but also attributed without an encoder of irony (Irony’s Edge 38). The “transideological nature of irony” enables irony to be “provocative when its politics are conservative or authoritarian as easily as when its politics are oppositional and subversive: it depends on who is using/attributing it and at whose expense it is seen to be” (15). Intention, then, also makes part of the attribution or inference of irony by the interpreter/observer at the semantic and pragmatic levels of irony; Hutcheon explains that “specific semantic meaning itself and the evaluative edge of irony are also inferred, in a way. And these inferences too are intentional acts” (116). Eco explains in regarding to the Model Reader and the encyclopedic competence: the spectator with whom the text establishes an implicit agreement . . . is not the ingenuous one (who can be struck at most by the apparition of an incongruous event) but the critical one who appreciates the ironic ploy of the quotation and enjoys its desired incongruity. In both cases, however, we have a critical side effect: aware of the quotation, the spectator is brought to elaborate ironically on the nature of such a device and to acknowledge the fact that one has been invited to play upon one’s encyclopedic competence (The Limits of Interpretation 89). Thus, since the functions which an ironic text can assume will vary according to the reader/interpreter’s performance and evaluation of the irony-work, it seems that the responsibility for if irony happens and how it happens lies with him/her. Given the above considerations, I will present Hutcheon’s contribution to this question. She outlined the functions of irony, in the sense of an “attributed or inferred operative motivation” (Hutcheon, Irony’s Edge 43, emphasis by the author), from the angle of the interpreter: The functions discussed here are not my inventions: they are all present and easily accounted for in the vast amount of commentary on irony throughout the centuries. It is only the ordering – the schematic, pragmatic organization – for which I am responsible . . . I have organized them on a kind of sliding scale, from the most benign both in tone and in inferred motivation (on the lower end) to a middle ground where the critical temperature, so to speak, begins to rise, and on to the more contentious zones where irony is generally accepted as a strategy of provocation and polemic. Each of these functions turns out to have both a positive and a negative articulation, for critics have presented each in both approving and disapproving terms (Hutcheon, Irony’s Edge 43-44). Hutcheon illustrates this in the form of a “temperature scale” showing the positive and negative articulations of the functions of irony: 35 maximal ← – – – – – – – – – – – affective – – – – – – – – – – – → charge inclusive AGGREGATIVE exclusionary “amiable elitist communities” “in-groups” corrective ASSAILING destructive satiric aggressive transgressive OPPOSITIONAL insulting subversive offensive non-dogmatic PROVISIONAL evasive demystifying hypocritical duplicitous self-deprecating SELF-PROTECTIVE arrogant ingratiating defensive offering a new DISTANCING indifferent perspective non-committal humorous LUDIC irresponsible playful trivializing teasing reductive complex COMPLICATING misleading rich imprecise ambiguous (+) ambiguous (-) emphatic REINFORCING decorative precise subsidiary minimal ← – affective – → charge Fig. 2. The functions of irony from: Hutcheon, Linda. Irony’s Edge, London and New York, 1995, p. 45. As may be observed at the bottom of Hutcheon’s figure, the “REINFORCING” function of irony seems to have “relatively little sense of much critical edge” (Hutcheon, Irony’s Edge 44), given its minimal affective charge; yet, since it can be used or 36 interpreted as a means “to underline a point in, say, everyday conversation”, it has different functions: its positive articulation would be for the need of emphasis and/or precision in communication, whilst its negative function would be seen as decorative, subsidiary, “non-essential”. Hutcheon explains the disposition of the Reinforcing function of irony in her schema and the consequent implications regarding affectivity: I think that even approval or disapproval of the assumed cleverness of the ironist might constitute some sort of emotional involvement, or at least response, through evaluation (N. Knox 1961: 76). Because of this, I have left some space, however minimal, at the bottom of the diagram for that arc of ironic affect to ‘discharge’ (Hutcheon, Irony’s Edge 46). Somewhat near the REINFORCING function and used or interpreted in verbal or structural operations, the not so sharp-edged COMPLICATING function of irony can be considered as complex, rich and/or positively ambiguous; on the other hand, its complexity can be negatively valued as misleading, imprecise and/or ambiguous in the sense of “lack of clarity in communication” (46). Furthermore, the LUDIC is another “benign function” of irony, since it can be positively seen as humorous, then playful, and/or teasing; however, it can also imply, negatively, irresponsibility and the trivialising of “the essential seriousness of art”. From this point of Hutcheon’s schema, the affective charge regarding irony increases conforming to its function. Although the DISTANCING function is often associated to detachment, being negatively valued as indifferent and/or non-committal, it can also be positively viewed as “a means to a new perspective from which things can be shown and thus seen differently” (Hutcheon, Irony’s Edge 47). As SELF- PROTECTIVE function demonstrates, to this degree of Hutcheon’s schema, “the terms used in discourses about irony to describe both the positive and negative evaluations of the functions are becoming much more ‘loaded’ ones”. That is why the SELF- PROTECTIVE can be a “defense of mechanism” and, then, positively used or interpreted as self-deprecating and/or ingratiating, or negatively viewed as arrogance and/or, as Hutcheon demonstrates from negative connotation of Greek word, eiron, defence (48). From self-protection and eiron, it goes up to the PROVISIONAL function of irony, “in the sense of always offering a proviso, always containing a kind of built-in conditional stipulation that undermines any firm and fixed stand” (48); negative evaluation of this function can be evasiveness, hypocrisy and/or duality, which are also associated with deception; positively interpreted, it can be undogmatic (though also 37 reticent) or desmystifying when seen as valuable. In this sense, and because it is closer to the top of the scale, “where its transideological nature may be most clear, where the critical edge can be seen to cut both ways . . . the same utterance may have opposite pragmatic effects” in the OPPOSITIONING function of irony, so it can favorably be transgressive to some whilst insulting to others, as well as subversive to some though offensive to others (49). Based on its Latin root, assilire, “to leap upon”, the ASSAILING function is the one which has the “sharpest edge” of the scale (Hutcheon, Irony’s Edge 49). Its negative charge is interpreted and felt as a “destructive attack”, yet this can be associated with a “positive motivation” for correction through satiric irony (50), which may take different forms: Arguably all irony can have a corrective function (Muecke 1970/1982: 4), but since satire is, by most definitions, ameliorative in intent (Highet 1962: 56), it is satire in particular that frequently turns to irony as a means of ridiculing – and implicitly correcting – the vices and follies of humankind. There is, however, a very wide tonal range possible within this corrective function, from the playfully teasing to the scornful and disdainful (Hutcheon, Irony’s Edge 50). Given the association of satire with a “conservative impulse”, there has been some discussion on whether the moral function of irony is pertinent to contemporary society or not, and that is why there has also been a neutralising of that association by American New Criticism. According to Hutcheon, “[commentators] argue either that there is certainly a lot around today for irony to correct, or that the very idea of correctable folly or error has given way to a skepticism about the very possibility of change” (Irony’s Edge 50); she argues that “it is necessary to insist, none the less, on the continued existence of some emotive accent to irony as well as the continuing presence, even after New Criticism, of some satiric, corrective functioning of irony”. Besides, another negative evaluation of the ASSAILING function of irony is the aggressive, which happens to be authoritative though sometimes by means of playfulness; however, “The negativized rhetoric of disapproval that circulates around this ASSAILING function of irony is one of cutting, derisive, destructive attack or sometimes of a bitterness that may suggest no desire to correct but simply a need to register contempt and scorn” (51, emphasis by the author). Finally, at the top of Hutcheon’s figure, lies the AGGREGATIVE function of irony. As was stated above, the discursive communities may precede irony and make 38 it possible at all, and this aspect is the reason why such a “social functioning of irony” is associated with inclusion and exclusion (Irony’s Edge 51): “it is discursive communities that are simultaneously inclusive and exclusive – not ironies” (92). Hence, Hutcheon positions this function at the top of her figure for its high level of critical and affective charges: Issues of power and authority are clearly going to be involved in this AGGREGATIVE functioning of irony, and it is for this reason that I have positioned it in Figure 2.1 at the top end of the affective scale with the maximal critical and emotive charge: this is where it is felt, where it is inferred and sometimes intended (Irony’s Edge 52, emphasis by the author). In the sense of irony playing to in-groups, the AGGREGATIVE function is, then, negatively evaluated as exclusionary and/or elitist; since “there are those who ‘get’ it and those who do not” and there may be a feeling of superiority and inferiority during the performance of irony, there may as well be anger and irritation by those who do not get it (52). On the other hand, such an exclusionary function of irony can also include and create what Booth calls “amiable communities” (28) between “ironist and interpreter and thus recalling the pleasures of collaboration, even collusion” (Hutcheon, Irony’s Edge 52). Thus, in observing all these functions of irony, it can be said that the pragmatic effects of an ironic text are more than response through interpretive cooperation by the reader: he/she feels and evaluates the edges of irony which constitute the work as a structured whole, and this may be determinant in his/her reading. Besides, a non-dual comprehension of the functions of irony – such as blame or praise in order to lead the interpreter to laughter or harm – allows us to conceive that possible plurality of interpretations (and, sometimes, inferences) of an ironic work, foreseen and performed as a textual strategy: Irony’s edge, then, would seem to ingratiate and to intimidate, to underline and to undermine; it brings people together and drives them apart. Yet, however plural these functions, we still seem to want to call the thing itself by a single name: irony. This pragmatic decision doesn’t at all mean that we should forget the complexities of irony’s inferred motivations, though: an awareness of the range of operations that irony can be interpreted as carrying out may help resist the temptation to generalize about either the effects of which irony is capable or the affect to which it can most certainly give rise. Retaining this complexity is important because edge is the primary distinguishing feature of irony as a rhetorical and structural strategy, no matter how protean its actual manifestations (Hutcheon, Irony’s Edge 53, emphases added). 39 In the following topic, I shall demonstrate how irony works in the structuring of a specific type of text which seems to have, by means of indirection, multiple levels and functions, that is, satire. Besides, I shall also present some ways in which the reader may be encouraged to perform the satiric text and respond, pragmatically, to it. 2.3 Irony and Reader in (Religious) Satire I have sought to demonstrate irony’s functionality as a rhetorical and structural strategy in an open work. An ironic work is performed during interpretive cooperation by the reader, who, given the semantic and pragmatic composition of irony, may endure and evaluate its different effects and functions. In order to elucidate these ideas, I shall conclude this chapter in relation to satire, which is, generally, an ironic type of work, and approaches the reader (or a community of readers) with pragmatic intentions. For the purposes of the present study, I shall contrast the features of satire with those of religious satire, which conveys its message to a specific community and may also turn the reader into the one it foresees in the first place. Although I shall deal with the satirical text later on, it must be said that the origins of satire lie in poetry and the oral tradition. According to Elliott, Classical Greek Comedy, which used to picture the ridiculous by means of iambic-metered invectives, satires or lampoons, originated in “improvisations of the authors or leaders of the Phallic Songs” (4). Despite its fertility purposes, it was believed that those songs could influence people’s attitudes, even leading them to death. In this sense, the first recording of a satirist is given by the Greek poet Archilochus in about 700 B.C.: he wrote and recited his iambic meters to Lycambes and his daughter Neobule, to whom Archilochus had once been betrothed though never married; it is said that both the listeners died by hanging themselves (7). Sixth-century B.C. poet Hipponax wrote the first choliambics to curse two sculptors, who “made a statue of him, exaggerating his [body] deformity and exposing it to public ridicule”, yet they survived Hipponax’s verses. Elliott thus highlights a common “hate and desire for revenge” between these two Greek satiric tales, and the power of the iambics (13): the iambic verses of a major poet, expressive of his hate, his will to destroy, his mockery, were believed to exert some kind of malefic power. The power seems to have resided, not in secret, esoteric spells or in the mechanics of sympathetic magic, but in the character of the poet himself – in his command 40 over the word. The word could kill; in popular belief it did kill (14-15, emphases by the author). From poems of heroic sagas, oral tradition and eighth-century texts, Pre- Christian Ireland’s history is dated from about 2,000 B.C. These sagas were told by poets called the filid, whose role was, according to Elliott, that of “prophets, medicine- men, historians, genealogists, lawgivers, encomiasts, ‘hard-attackers,’ and much else besides”, and whose function was praise and blame (21). Due to their hostility and to social problems derived from their satiric tales, there were many attempts to banish the filid from early Ireland, which reduced their numbers and restrained the exercise of their satire by law, that is, by linking it with “physical crimes as bodily assault, sexual attack on a man’s wife, or theft of his castle” (Elliott 24-25). On the other hand, there was also lawful satire, whose “public value” guaranteed the collecting of taxes by the filid. Despite satire’s social value in early Ireland, which survives in figurative expressions such as “die of shame” which imply physical damage through the ridicule and, hence, destruction of one’s honour, language reflects the Irish conception of satire (28): These tales are unquestionably products of a ‘shame’ culture – a culture in which man literally lives by his good name. If his name is enhanced, he flourishes; if it is defiled, he dies. In such a culture the poets are truly creative. By their encomium they create honor; they make good names. But they are also truly destructive, for their satire eats honor, which is to say, it destroys life itself (30, emphases added). As Classical Greek Comedy influenced the first Roman satirist, spirit and social functions of satire are present in it, yet it is primarily comprehended as a form of art from Latin term satura, whose original meaning is, according to Quintilian, mixture or medley (Elliott 101-02). Satiric verses by Lucilius (180-103 B.C.), Horace (65-68 B.C.) and Juvenal (about 60-after 127 A.C.) used to be metrically structured, along with “ethical and social premises to the Greek philosophies of conduct, cynicism and stoicism” and “Socratic irony and Old Comedy rigor”, and framed by situations which contributed to its moral purposes (105): so the satire will be framed by a conflict of sorts between the satirist . . . and an adversary. The adversary usually has a minor role, serving only to prod the ‘I’ into extended comment on the issue (vice or folly) at hand; he may be sketchily defined, a completely shadowy figure, or he may be as effectively projected. . . . Similarly, the background against which the two talk may be barely suggested or it may form an integral part of the poem. . . . In any event, 41 the frame is usually there, providing a semi-dramatic situation in which vice and folly may reasonably be dissected (Elliott 110-11). Besides the satirical form, Horace and Juvenal represent two kinds of approach to the listeners in Roman satire, comical and tragical (Elliott 117). According to Highet, their satiric verses expressed their “different beliefs about evil”: Horace’s conversational letters used to convey “the truth with a smile, so that he . . . cure[d] them of that ignorance which [was] their worst fault”, whilst Juvenal’s monologues aimed at the punishment and destruction of mankind through laughter (235) – that is why Highet associates the latter with a misanthropic satirist, who “looks at life and finds it, not tragic, nor comic, but ridiculously contemptible and nauseating hateful” (236). Although satiric verses were more common among the first satirists of whom there is record, monologue, parody and narrative have also become a means to ridicule society or a given community, a literary work and its characters, respectively, with corrective intentions or not (Highet 13-14). Variety of satirical forms and tones is a result of public disapproval of the ridicule which characterises satire for its influencing of people’s behaviour – as may be observed in Greek and Irish satires. Elliott also illustrates this from late sixteenth-century England, in which the printing of satires was prohibited by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London, and works already published had to be burnt (261). Hostility was, then, conveyed through wit: Once wit has been brought into the service of the satiric spirit, then all the rhetorical maneuvers by which the literary satirist achieves his end become available: irony, innuendo, burlesque, parody, allegory – all the devices of indirection which help make palatable an originally unacceptable impulse. It is a nice complication, however, that the devices which make satire acceptable to polite society at the same time sharpen its point (Elliott 264, emphases added). Besides Horace’s and Juvenal’s monologues, Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal (1729) is an example of an eighteenth-century English satiric monologue; also from that time, Samuel Richardson’s Pamela: or Virtue Rewarded (1740) and Henry Fielding’s Joseph Andrews (1742) represent prose fiction “parodied, in humors and leers” (Highet 143); Evelyn Waugh’s Decline and Fall (1928) and George Orwell’s Animal Farm (1945) are examples of English twentieth-century satirical narratives. Those works demonstrate a variety of forms and functions of satire through wit and devices of indirection, such as “irony, paradox, antithesis, parody, colloquialism, anticlimax, topicality, obscenity, violence, vividness, exaggeration”, which convey 42 ridicule in such a way people will accept the satirical work – or even understand it (Highet 18). Regarding such a variety, Clark points out: It swings backwards and forwards, on an ellipse about the two foci of the satiric universe, the exposure of folly and the castigation of vice; it fluctuates between the flippant and the earnest, the completely trivial and the heavily didactic; it ranges from extremes of crudity and brutality to the utmost refinement and elegance; it employs singly or in conjunction monologue, dialogue, epistle, oration, narrative, manners-painting, character-drawing, allegory, fantasy, travesty, burlesque, parody, and any other vehicle it chooses; and it presents a chameleon-like surface by using all the tones of the satiric spectrum, wit, ridicule, irony, sarcasm, cynicism, the sardonic and invective (qtd. in Pollard 5). Given the above, the essence of satire seems to be, then, “its relation to reality. Satire wishes to expose and criticize and shame human life, but it pretends to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth” (Highet 158). This means, on the one hand, that satire “is both moral and social in its focus and ameliorative in its intention” (Hutcheon, A Theory of Parody 16); on the other, it also implies a position of moral superiority of the satirist in presenting his/her – most commonly, “his” – truth, which society cannot (supposedly) see (Highet 18), “from its [the satire’s] own obliquely critical angle and through its own distorting mirror” (Pollard 7). Hence, although discrepancy between an ideal and a reality is presented by means of reverse and wit, that is, a negative example, and usually followed by the suggestion of a “positive action” (Elliott 111), the relationship between satirist and society can be still of dubiousness: On the most obvious level it points to the inevitable discrepancy between the ideal image, projected by rhetorical convention, and what it takes to be the actual fact. . . . Despite society’s doubts about the character of the satirist, there may develop a feeling that in its general application his work has some truth in it – or the feeling that other people may think that it has some truth in it. Individuals who recognize characteristics of themselves in the objects of attack cannot afford to acknowledge the identity even privately. So they may reward the satirist as proof of piety, while inwardly they fear him (Elliott 266, emphasis by the author). It must be added that the satirical meaning of a work can arise, according to Pollard and his use of Aristotelian concept of drama or “character in action” (24): out of what one does or fails to do, what others do towards and say about him/her, what he/she says about him/herself, and/or what the author says about him/her. The satirist “is constantly required to maintain a fine balance between literature and life. When he fails, he can so easily decline into the mere preacher or moralist” and have his/her work miss its satir