A Critique of Wayne C. Booth's A Rhetoric of Irony

Abstract

In this paper Booth's ‘rhetorical’ description of ‘stable irony’ in A Rhetoric of Irony as a particular operation performed by authors and readers is discussed. It is maintained that Booth's argument is blurred by an uncertain focus, now on ‘a particular operation’, now on irony as a type of statement. It is claimed that if the operation is not an exclusive defining characteristic of irony, the title of the book is unearned. Booth is criticized for failing to distinguish between ‘being ironic’, ‘describing something ironic’, and imitating the two in fiction. Booth's intentional notion of meaning is criticized from a consensualist point of view. the concept of ‘the implied author’ is rejected as superfluous, as a ‘fallacy of anthropomorphic projection’. A section on ‘clues to irony’ offers a new distinction between verbal irony and ‘the technique of implied quotation marks’. Two subsequent sections point out necessary distinctions (not observed by Booth) between parody and mock, and Booth's claim that genre determines meaning and value is refuted. Finally, illogicalities in Booth's classification of ironies are exposed, and it is argued that the book suffers severely from failing to define irony ‐ pure and simple.