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Irony in Hardy and Conrad

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Richard G. Lillard
Richard G. Lillard*
Affiliation:
Los Angeles Junior College
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Extract

Critics have analyzed at length the philosophy of ironic determinism held by Thomas Hardy, and they have been almost equally voluble in treating the irony that lies like a spinal column in the body of Joseph Conrad's writing. But although the critics have successfully summed up the philosophies of these writers, they have abstained from any satisfactory discussion of the methods of irony which Hardy and Conrad use to illustrate their concepts of irony. The two novelists use differing methods to bring out somewhat differing ideas on life, and I propose here to contrast their methods so as to bring out the distinctive qualities in the method of each.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 50 , Issue 1 , March 1935 , pp. 316 - 322
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1935

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References

1 The dictionaries and encyclopaedias remain the best references as to the nature of irony. For discussions of its characteristics, see Bourne, Randolph S., “The Life of Irony,” in The Atlantic Monthly, cxi (March, 1913), 357–367; Johnson, S. K., “Some Aspects of Dramatic Irony in Sophoclean Tragedy,” in Classical Review, xlii, (Dec., 1928); and Saintsbury, George, “Irony,” in The Dial, lxxxii (March, 1927), 181–187. Thomson, J. A. K., Irony, An Historical Introduction (George Allen & Unwin, Ltd., London: 1926), analyzes irony in ancient writers but does not attempt definition of irony; Turner, F. McD. C., The Element of Irony in English Literature (Cambridge University Press, 1926), discusses irony in eighteenth-century writers, but seems to confuse satire and irony.

2 Garwood, Helen, Thomas Hardy, an Illustration of the Philosophy of Schopenhauer (Philadelphia: John C. Winston Co., 1911), pp. 60–66.

3 Grimsditch, H. B., Character and Environment in the Novels of Thomas Hardy (London: H. F. & G. Witherby, 1925).

4 Chew, S. C., Thomas Hardy, Poet and Novelist (Bryn Mawr, Pa., 1921), pp. 114–116.—Garwood, Ibid., pp. 57 ff.—Johnson, Lionel P., The Art of Thomas Hardy (London: John Lane, 1923), pp. 56–57.—Williams, Randall, The Wessex Novels of Thomas Hardy (London and Toronto: J. M. Dent & Sons, Ltd.; New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1924), pp. 136 ff.

5 See Chew, Ibid., p. 76.

6 See Ford, F. M., Joseph Conrad, a Personal Remembrance (Boston: Little, Brown, and Co. 1925), pp. 218–219.