Abstract
The four Berenger plays together present a central irony in the Berenger character- he enthusiastically imagines greatness for the human race while he is ironically skeptical that humanity, with all its finite limitations, can ever experience greatness to any degree. Sometimes Berenger's hopes take the form of social aesthetics, sometimes ideological and political reforms; sometimes he expresses faith in the transcendent powers of human love, sometimes in the ultimate spiritual worth of the human soul. Berenger endorses human potential, but this endorsement is always undermined by a subtle but pervasive undermining of potential, for although we do not see Berenger fail, we do not see him succeed either. We respond, thus, to the paradox which arises out of the ambiguity of success and failure, a paradox that demonstrates quite well the combination of Romanticism and irony which specifies Romantic or philosophical irony.
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