On Irony As Modern Artistic Expression

Historically, irony has been attracting extremely large attention of literators, linguisticians, psychologists and philosophers. In order to cope with the complexity of the world, scientists make a careful and detailed analysis while artists represent it in an obliquitous way. Irony that appears in literature and art is just determined by the complexity of the world and the particularity of literary. Due to the complexity and agility of natural language and human thoughts on which irony depends in the process of incubation and expression, various research areas and theory schools could not give satisfactory explanation to irony thus far. Definite and identic discriminating sign or criterion for irony still lacks, so there is no convenient and fixed mode or shortcut of understanding irony. But it is just this condition which creates maximum space for the exertion of irony. Irony is not only the preferred technique and category of writers and theorists of each period, the basic or special property of imaginative literature, but also it has the vitality of theory and strong practical significance and this make itself never ceased to evolve and update ever since it came into existence. Irony exists not only in literary, but also exists in all forms of culture and civilization. So irony not only has aesthetic significance, but also has the importance, primitiveness and profundity of thoughts.The concept of irony comes from the West. The study of irony at home is relatively insufficient. Former studies mainly concentrate on the domain of linguistics and the level of literary appraisals. The main theme of this dissertation is to construct a theoretical framework of irony and to develop and innovate the theory of irony.The concept of irony originated from Greek rhetoric. From then on, it just existed as a kind of figure of speech in the framework of traditional rhetoric until 16th century. The expansion of the concept of irony started from the German romanticism literary in the first half of the 19th century. Before it evolved into the concept we use frequently today, the concept of irony went through two big jumps in quality. The first leap was the reformation of the New Criticism. The second leap was the impregnation of the Postmodernism. The school of New Criticism attached great importance to irony and reformed the concept of irony, making it began to expand while at the same time presented the tendency of being weakening and being generalizing. Irony has become not only the basic principle of poetic language, but also the ontological principle or even the mode of thinking of poet and a world view or methodology. Heterogeneous but isomorphous irony and postmodernism are all digestion to authorities and cores, deconstruction of ideal rationalism. In the context of post-modernism, irony assumes the characteristics of dynamic, diversity, destruction and pluralism and reflects the rebellion of culture in mass consumption society.Iromy has three layers of meaning and they are as a rhetorical technique, as an expressional manner and as a philosophical world view and methodology. The characteristic of rhetorical irony is self-negation and self-development. Irony can transcend the single field of view. It can evoke plenty of associations and imaginations. Its existence requires unique and strong sense of irony. Irony can be used in three difference levels——the irony as a fact or a phenomenon, the irony as a name and the irony as a concept. The emergence of irony involves many problems. The uniqueness of irony and thinking characteristics originated from the contradictoriness of practical world in essentially; irony is the formalized expression of human social historical practice of inconsistency and conflict; the population of irony is closely interrelated to the decline of religion in the West; irony is a narrative strategy as Constrained by Power and Discourse; irony is the agreement of external special form and internal subconsciousness. The studies on the types of irony help to further understand the objects of study, thus can pave the way to the study on other aspects. By subdividing the irony as a rhetorical device based on literature practice, we can see its various displaying forms, techniques which are applied to rhetoric and the mechanism which can produces some unique effects. The various types of techniques of expression of irony are the result of expansion of irony from the micro-level of rhetoric. They embody the tremendous artistic expansion irony has had. This is the primary cause why irony can be a keyword and an important category of the theory of literature and criticism. Irony has various displaying forms. The most common basic types include verbal irony, context irony, tragic irony, general irony and romantic irony etc. In this dissertation, the irony as a rhetoric device is reduced to six typical subtypes——the"floundered and waffled"irony, the irony of using"irony", the"restraint or exaggerate"irony, the paradox irony, the holophrastic irony and the irony which was caused by distortion and imitation. As to the matter of techniques of expression, irony can be divided into the irony of literary-style, the irony of literary images, the irony of thematic orientations, etc. The profundity of connotation of irony decides its multifaceted basal characteristic. In this sense, it has feature which have"meaningful form", feature which is isolated and unacquainted, feature which is of"carnival"and is absurd, etc.Irony is an artistic expression. In the process of creation and reception, it will surely generate some special changes and response on the psychology of the creator and the receiver. The psychological direction of the creation of irony not only includes the irony the creator applies to others, but also includes the irony the creator applies to himself. In the deep heart of the creator, there exists some aggressive intention. By introducing a kind of comical point of view, the creator attempts to play down the seriousness of situation. So it can be said that the creator of irony not only produces anxiety, but also eliminates anxiety. The irony creator applies to himself need to be introspected first. This is possible and necessary. It is the necessary way of self-motivation, transcendency and promotion. The process the creator applies irony to himself is also a process of self-criticism. By imitating ugliness and comicality, the mental tension of the receiver will vanish suddenly and some kind of pleasant sensation will arise. It complies with the negative mentality of the receiver, so the effect can always be strengthened. The reception of irony has an effect of re-creation. So the comprehension and explanation should be rich, dynamic and polynary but not flat, static and unique.Irony is of great importance which can not be underestimated to literary creation and appreciation, literary theory and criticism. Irony has been a very important category of literary theory and criticism. As a kind of rhetorical device, irony not only is of great methodological importance, but also plays important roles of supplementing and substituting to the oddness of plots. And it also has some peculiar value for narrative theory and literary style. When the expansion of the concept of irony reaches a certain degree, the irony as a linguistic phenomenon integrated with the irony as an attitude of philosophy, and the irony as language rhetoric integrated with the irony as social rhetoric at the same time. Thus irony is also of significance for the reality life. It can help us to look upon on everyday life with a kind of rational attitude.