المفارقة عند جيمز جويس واميل حبيبي / Irony in Joyce's Ulysses and Habibi's Pessoptimist

Samia Mehrez

Program

ALIF

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http://www.jstor.org/stable/521822

All Authors

محرز, سامية; Mehrez, Samia

Document Type

Research Article

Publication Title

Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics

Publication Date

1984

doi

https://www.doi.org/10.2307/521822

Abstract

[The twentieth century is considered the age of Irony par excellence. It is during this century that Irony became a highly complex literary concept. Irony has developed from a rhetorical device in literature, to an attitude; a way of seeing things, of using language, and a strategy in face of the "real world" as represented in literature. This study undertakes to analyse the use of Irony in two contemporary works: Ulysses by James Joyce and Al-Waqaiʿ (Pessoptimist) by Emile Habibi. There are two kinds of Irony operative in the two texts. Verbal Irony raises questions on the level of literary form, structure and style. Situational Irony, on the other hand, bears directly on the choice of the hero, who is in these two works "the victim of Irony" and all the historical and ideological questions raised by such a choice. By using Irony as a perspective for the analysis of these two texts we discover that despite their apparent differences, they are indeed very similar. This comparative framework also allows us to question the genre of the "novel" in the conventional meaning of the term. The article begins with a history and meaning of the word Irony. We then proceed to introduce the two authors and their texts. The final sections of the paper comprise an analysis of Irony in the two works. They explore the role of intertextuality, style and characterization in sustaining verbal and situational Irony.]

First Page

33

Last Page

54

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