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Irony, Allegory, and Metaphysical Decay

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Gordon Teskey
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Abstract

In classical rhetoric, irony is included in allegory (“other speaking”) as one of its species: contradiction, or antiphrasis. Because contradiction is incompatible with the classical definition of allegory as “continued metaphor” and with the synecdochal and associative mode of thinking (polysemy) typical of complex allegorical works, irony was excluded from allegory in postclassical literary theory. Nevertheless, the conditions for allegorical expression are grounded in the systematic confrontation of antiphrasis and polysemy, as in a grid. For allegory to emerge from this scene of confrontation, polysemy must predominate, transforming the grid into a perspectival regress to an origin that remains out of sight. This transformation is accomplished by means of interpretation, to which irony, being confined to the realm of the subject, is inimical. Antiphrasis remains present throughout. But it is interpreted as the resonance of the origin that remains out of sight. (GT)

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 109 , Issue 3 , May 1994 , pp. 397 - 408
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1994

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