Poétique de l’ironie by Pierre Schoentjes (review)

Abstract

282 Reviews 'Translating and Dramatizing Phedre', gives Scott's thought-provoking translation of a key passage of text embodying his idea that Racine's characters have a 'met? rical thumbprint': Phedre?2 + 4, Hippolyte?3 + 3, ete. This can be made to work convincingly in English, but once again incoherent metrical analysis of Racine's text (pp. 101-04) decisively damages the case (e.g. 'C'est moi, Prince, c'est moi' 2 + 4, with no accent on 'Prince', thus failing to register the metrically disruptive syntactical accent indicated by Racine's punctuation?see also 'Oui, Prince, je languis' 2 + 4, and 'Charmant, jeune, trainant tous les cceurs apres soi' 3 + 3 + 3 + 3, and 'cette tete charmante' 3 + 3 but 'Crois-moi, ce Monstre affreux2 + 4, ete). In 'Landscapes ofthe Line', illuminating discussion of the imitation of Nature in the verse of Vigny and Goldsmith does lead to an odd analysis of what look like predominantly iambic lines in Gray's Elegy (p. 132). Scott's 'phrasal analysis' reveals a veritable zoo of amphibrachs , amphimacers, and antibacchic feet by dividing the line thus: 1. The curfew/tolls the knell/ of parting day/, 2. The lowing herd/ winds slowly/ o'er the lea/, 3. The ploughman/ homeward plods/ his weary way/, 4. And leaves the world/ to darkness/ and to me/. Does '/' mark a syntactic boundary? In the absence of a consistent syntactic or prosodic criterion fordefining the 'phrase' or the 'foot' we are leftwondering, forex? ample, why inline 1 the division is 'subject/verb + object' rather than 'subject + verb/ object'. And, in line 4, why 'verb + object/' rather than 'verb/ object/'? Once again, the idea is interesting but unclear. Things get increasingly less clear when the drive to analyse the English decasyllable into three phrases produces, for example, 'And beauteous horror/ strikes/ the dazzled sight' and 'More cultured groves/ o'ershade/ the grassy meads' (p. 135), where the scansion now marks a boundary between verb and object. In 'Describing and Translating the French Prose Poem' the analysis again shows typical inconsistencies. Discussing a text of MacOrlan, Scott observes (p. 154) that 'ternary units seem to become more insistent: [.. .] ne pouvait s'empecher (6)/ de hocher la tete (5)/ avec melancolie (6) //en contemplant (4)/ l'effortsterile (4)/ de ces cyclistes (4)'. Since accent is implied by '/', 'de hocher la tete/9and 'effortsterile/' are inconsistent with Scott's earlier 'EWeflahe Yodewr 3 + 3' and 'des ruisseaux abondants 3 + 3' (both p. 123) respectively, since in these latter examples Scott marks accents within the phrase. This collection finishes with an essay on French inflections in English poetry and one on translating free verse. Its erudition and breadth leave me feeling sheepish about my nit-picking objections, but there again, a house is no securer than its foundations. In the analysis of art text as in life, 'he who would do good must do it in the minutest particulars'. Hertford College, Oxford Roger Pensom Poetique de I'ironie. By Pierre Schoentjes. Paris: Seuil. 2001. 348 pp. ISBN 202 -041483-x. This book can be highly recommended as a standard point of critical reference on irony. For Anglo-Saxon readers there will be a good deal in Pierre Schoentjes's work that will seem familiar. That is essentially because Schoentjes is writing for a French audience and, as he points out, the French have lagged behind in their appreci? ation of one kind of irony in particular, romantic irony (since Friedrich Schlegel was translated into French only in 1996). But Schoentjes does not simply stick to the well-trodden ground of ancient, rhetorical, and romantic ironies; he brings the story up to date by including discussions of the modernist and postmodernist uses MLRy 99.1, 2004 283 of the concept. Moreover he illustrates all his points with well-chosen and lucidly presented analyses from French, English, and ancient literature. Part I deals with four different kinds of irony in a historical perspective: Socratic irony, situational irony, verbal irony, and romantic irony. Part II deals more properly with the title of the work, the poetics of irony, asking how we can identify irony and suggesting that gesture, tone of voice, punctuation, repetition, juxtaposition, litotes...