Tragic Irony Research Articles

“Oh, God, What a Pity!”: The Irish Brigade at Fredericksburg and the Creation of Myth

No event more severely damaged Irish enthusiasm for the Northern war effort than the Battle of Fredericksburg. Northern Irish reacted with horror and outrage to the staggering casualties sustained by the Irish Brigade during its failed assault on Marye's Heights. Of the 1,200 men who made the attack, 545 were killed, wounded, or missing. 1 For many Irish, these grim figures confirmed old suspicion that Northern leaders would waste Irish lives wantonly. It is therefore surprising that the historical record all but ignores the battle's influence on Irish morale. Instead, the literature on Fredericksburg almost uniformly emphasizes the Irish Brigade's gallantry before the stone wall on December 13, 1862, and the tragic irony of its clash with Irish Confederates. How did the Irish Brigade come to occupy such a lofty, and often romantic, place in the history of the battle? And why does the brigade's doomed charge still overshadow the consequences of its destruction on the Heights--namely, Irish disillusionment on the home front? Much of the answer depends upon the postwar writings of brigade veterans David Power Conyngham, Father William Corby, and St. Clair A. Mulholland. Refusing to let history dismiss as meaningless the Irish blood spilled at Fredericksburg, these men forged a body of literature remarkable for its propensity to mythologize Irish participation in the Civil War, North and South.

Charlotte Dacre and the Feminization of Violence

Charlotte Dacre's relatively neglected fictions create a unique space in the dialectic of violence that characterizes so much of British Romanticism. Her simultaneous attraction to and repulsion from violence is reflective of an era that apotheosized the sublime, which formed its imagination on the bloody Revolution in France and the increasingly visible brutalities of industrialism, and that made the Gothic its most popular literary commodity. But Dacre's peculiar contribution to this hermeneutic is to build through her four major novels a mythology by which violence emerges, most of all, from feminine libidinous drives. This essay, therefore, begins by contrasting Dacre's approach to feminine sexual desire with that of two other notable women writers of the period, Letitia Elizabeth Landon and Mary Tighe. The essay continues to explore Dacre's most purely Gothic expression, Zofloya (1806), particularly through the scene in which Victoria stalks, attacks, and murders a girl whom she perceives to be her sexual rival. And it concludes with an analysis of a lesser-known novel, The Passions (1811), and its vibrant anti-heroine, Appollonia Zulmer. Troped as noble hunter, ferocious goddess, social critic, and scorned woman, Appollonia is Dacre's most complex vision of the meaning of feminine violence. Still, Dacre's ultimate inclination is toward tragic irony: though she vigorously rewrites the conventional Gothic script (where women are the victims of demonic men), she does not envision anything like the comic release dreamed of, more than a century later, in Hélène Cixous's "The Laugh of the Medusa."

Språk och identitet i Barbro Smeds dramatik

The characters of the dramatist Barbro Smeds often use a fashion- language or a jargon in their dialogue. By its gaps and contradictions an abyss behind is shown its surface. The speech displays curious sliding motions, and by them the characters pursuit of identity becomes visible. This pursuit contains the "tragic irony" of the characters, as they are searching for their inner most kernel, at the same time as their identity is construed by a perpetual interactive process. The language and the speech make it possible to study this formation of identity, because the individual is construed by the language and is born into an already existing one. The three plays studied are Mars or the Spies of Love, R and Sun and Spring. The first play is an investigation of a couple of upper class jargons, the hospital jargon and the language of the evening courses, the second of the broken Swedish of immigrants and the third of the masculine and patriachal political language. In Mars or the Spies of Love each character has a special version of the jargon and in R an individual version of broken Swedish. In Sun and Spring masculine and feminine language are played out against each other, and by that the sexist structure of the political language is shown. Common to all the plays are the instability of the language and its identity-forming function. Another common trait is the feminist aproach. Mars or the Spies of Love is implicitly feminist, because women are moulded as the stronger ones, those who have the capacity of surviving a changing conception of the universe. In Sun and Spring the feminism is more explicitly expressed by a woman's revenge. Every play has a feminist dramaturgy, e g a couple of lesser peaks instead of one and an associative joining together of scenes rather than a causal. According to Sue-Ellen Case the most important aims of a feminist dramaturgy are deconstruction of the perception of woman in the traditional subject system and putting her into the subjects position. Especially Sun and Spring serves those functions.

QOL, costs and insurance - a ‘tragic irony’ in mental health

QOL, costs and insurance - a ‘tragic irony’ in mental health

The Depth of the Field

Near the end of his life, Husserl, Heidegger's teacher, saw the tragic irony: that the sciences our vision produced … have turned against us … separating our vision from its rootedness in our dreams, our needs and hopes; concealing from our view the depth of the field in which visible and invisible intersect and interpenetrate. (Levin, 1988, p. 99)

The Struggle for Democracy in Uganda

It is a tragic irony of African nationalism that the potent weapon of democracy, which indigenous politicians wielded so effectively to dislodge European colonialism from the continent, has been misused and perverted in the independence era despite its continuing historical and moral appeal. Although many leaders passionately expressed commitment to the achievement of democracy before attaining state power, their actions thereafter have for the most part proved that they had appropriated this popular concept mainly for its instrumental value; namely, in order to mobilise mass support in the contest for power with the aid of an ideological slogan. Many of the most regrettable acts by African leaders may be attributed either to opportunism and cynicism or to a genuine incomprehension of the principles of democracy, because their implementation ought to have enhanced the human dignity and quality of life of all concerned.

Who Says the Montauk Tribe Is Extinct? Judge Abel Blackmar's Decision in Wyandank v. Benson (1909)

At the October 1910 session of the New YorkState Supreme Court, sitting in Riverhead, New York, Judge Abel Blackmar announced his ”findings of fact” and ”conclusions of law” in the case of Wyandank Pharaoh, chief of the Montauk tribe of Indians, plaintiff, versus Jane Benson and the estate of the late Arthur Benson, defendants. The Montauk people in the crowded courtroom sat in stunned silence as the judge announced that the Montauk tribe no longer existed. The tribe, he said, ”has disintegrated. . . . They have no internal government, and they lived a shiftless life of hunting, fishing and cultivating the ground and often leaving Montauk for long periods to work in some menial capacity for whites.”’ The tribe, continued the judge, had been in decline for decades, and the purchase of their residence rights by Arthur Benson and his family merely gave the ”final death blow.” There is a tragic historical irony in Judge Blackmar’s ruling. During the first century after the establishment of the European settlements in North America, the Native American people were forced to give up their hunting grounds, language, religion, political and economic systems and accept a role as domestics or

The Debate Between Thomas More and William Tyndale, 1528–33: Ideas on Literature and Religion

The disagreement between Thomas More and William Tyndale has often been deplored. It has been felt that the controversy failed to bring out the best in More as a writer – that he became bitter, bullying and, worst of all, tedious. Alistair Fox, in his recent book on More, while rightly assigning an important place to the controversial works, writes of them, on the whole, with distaste, finding ‘a pattern of progressive deterioration; dialogue gives way to debellation, self-control yields to loss of proportion and perspective, candour is replaced by dishonesty, and charity is displaced by violence’. More's latest biographer, Richard Marius, finds ‘ferocity and deadly dullness’ in More's polemic, ‘monumental self-righteousness and viciousness’ in Tyndale's. Other modern readers have agreed; C. S. Lewis, in particular, pointed to the tragic irony of such a lengthy quarrel between two men who shared many intellectual assumptions and were to have strangely similar fates. It is true that the opponents have much in common, true also that the scolding of scholars is no longer regarded as first-class intellectual entertainment. And the reader, while admitting the importance of the long-distance debate in the Renaissance as a means of clarifying and disseminating ideas, misses, in More's writings against Tyndale, the pleasing courtesy of hisLetter to Martin Dorpin defence of Erasmus and, more acutely perhaps, the ability to compress and control his subject which gives his earlier polemical letters their attractive blend of lightness and earnestness.

Homeless hieroglyphs

Recently, more than ever, Mesoamericanists have had reason to share in the regret felt by Egyptologists at one aspect of the history of antiquities-looting in Egypt - one clearly tinged with tragic irony. For, as Brian Fagan (1975: 11, 261) and others have pointed out, attempts to remove sculpture from ancient Egyptian sites on a large scale began only in the 1820s, and that was just the period when Champollion was achieving his basic decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphic writing. Since the coveted basrelief sculptures usually had to be prised from their settings by using chisels and crowbars, any associated hieroglyphic inscriptions tended to end up in smithereens. Champollion himself, as he travelled through Egypt seeking and transcribing texts, became appalled at the destruction, yet more than half a century would pass before collectors and museums came to recognize the damage they were causing through their purchases.

The concept of irony in Solger

Solger (1780-1819) distinguishes between apparent irony (a ridiculing attitude that does not permit a person to take anything seriously at all) and true irony, which he considers to be the fundamental, genuine condition of man. Placed between the infinite and the finite, the human being can only complete his eternal destiny in this present limited and finite world. Whatever is serious and of real importance can only be found in God, and in our own lives this is realized precisely through our fall. Tragic irony is the state of mid which illuminates this immediate presence of the divine in human existence. We can derive diverse forms of irony from irony: artistic-, religious-, moral- and dialectic irony. The only aspects Solger was abIe to develop in his philosophical system were those related to artistic irony -the irony of the fact that Eternal Idea fades away in sensible, tangible reality in general and in the reality of the individual as well, precisely through the understanding of art. Art is not fundamentally production, but what is more, it is the form of existence in which the Idea and its appearance in reality interpenetrate each other in perfect harmony-. This union is an instantaneous event which takes place in all artistic creation and artistic 're-creation'.

Owen's Remains

Gwil Owen died suddenly in July 1982 in Cambridge, where, after many years as Professor of Ancient Philosophy in Oxford and Harvard, he had made his last academic home. With tragic irony, his death coincided almost exactly with the publication of a Festschrift' in which a generation of classical philosophers celebrated his unique influence on the development of the study of ancient philosophy since the war. Such volumes are frequently notable for the somewhat forced nature of the compliments paid to the dedicatee by the contributors; the uniform and evident depth and sincerity of the tributes contained in his celebration are a mark of the universal respect in which Owen was held in the field that he had done so much to develop. Yet, although it has taken four years for the Collected Papers to appear, as Martha Nussbaum points out in her delicate Preface, this was Gwil's project. He himself prepared the texts for publication; and although there were some gaps and incompletenesses (filled in a sensitive manner by the editor), this is in no sense a posthumous compilation: and for that at least we should be grateful. For Gwil Owen was an original: everything he did bore his unmistakeable personal stamp. To have been left with anything less than the genuine article would have been tragic indeed. The collection contains twenty items, and as such very nearly the whole of Owen's published output (the exceptions, principally review notices, are listed in the Preface). It is a small corpus for such a reputation to rest upon; but in an age in which academic publication records are judged by mass rather than by weight, it is salutary to reflect upon the importance of the material contained in this volume. It is not an exaggeration to say that Owen revolutionised the study of ancient philosophy after the war. The

Ajax in theTrugrede

A leading character in a play, at any rate in a major speech, is normally doing several things: he is saying what the development of the plot requires, and sometimes also expressing the dramatist's own tragic vision; he is also expressing his own thoughts and emotions, or saying what from his point of view the rhetoric of the situation requires. There are thus at least two questions to ask about theTrugrede:What is its function in the economy of the plot? Why does Sophocles give this speech to Ajax, and what light does it throw on his character as presented by Sophocles? The first question is easy enough to answer. There can be no doubt that this is a deception speech in the sense that Tecmessa and the Chorus are misled about what is going to happen, and at any rate part of Sophocles' purpose was evidently to achieve an effect of relaxation of tension or ‘retardation’. At first all is gloom and despair; then when the suicide of Ajax seems to be imminent, this speech leads Tecmessa and the sailors to think that he means to live on after all, and they express their relief in a joyful hyporchema. Then follows a messenger speech with warnings that dispel their joy but still offer a gleam of hope, until that hope is extinguished when they find the dead body of Ajax. Sophocles has thus contrived an arresting dramatic sequence to fill the interval between the opening scene and the discovery of Ajax' death. The main effect could have been produced by direct, unambiguous falsehood in the speech we are considering, but (still looking at it from the dramaturgical point of view) Sophocles presumably wished the spectators to be aware that the joy and relief were illusory, so that they could at once appreciate the tragic irony of the sailors' rejoicing. There was probably no way of informing the audience directly that the speech was meant to be deceptive, and Sophocles therefore included in it numerous ambiguous expressions which the Chorus and Tecmessa, eager to believe good news, interpret as indicating a change of purpose, whereas for the spectators, who are more detached and probably aware of the traditional version of the story according to which Ajax killed himself, they have ominous overtones and arouse suspicion, in the last lines verging on certainty, that in this play too he still means to take his own life.

Theatrical Irony

It is my intention to derive the concept of ‘theatrical irony’ from the general theory of theatrical communication.The basic meaning of the term ‘irony’, from the Greek word ‘ειρωνεια’, was ‘dissimulation’. Over the centuries, this term has been extended to additional semantic fields and consequently acquired new meanings as in ‘Socratic irony’, ‘philosophical irony’, ‘romantic irony’, ‘dramatic irony’, ‘tragic irony’, and so on. At the same time, a number of more colloquial expressions were introduced as well, as in ‘ironic smile’, ‘irony of events’, ‘irony of fate’, and so on. I am of the opinion, however, that despite the diversity of such phrases and regardless of their partial overlap, it is still possible to unveil a common semantic core. Furthermore, it is my belief that our understanding of theatrical irony benefits from all these additional usages.

Artificial intelligence: Immediate promises and ultimate goals

Today's computers come with ‘software’ programs that are typically so difficult to use and to learn that ‘artificial intelligence’ and ‘human engineering’ can play important roles in making computers more accessible. Computers are rapidly becoming so large and powerful, and so cheap, that the large AI programs needed are becoming increasingly feasible. But the ultimate promise of artificial intelligence is far greater – to throw light on and perhaps solve some of the very difficult key problems of intelligence. It would be a tragic irony if today's fad-of-the-computer and ‘AI expert systems’ for ‘smarts’ left even fewer people trying to work on these fundamental problems.

Long-Term Care for the Elderly and Disabled

OF all the difficult health-care issues facing the nation today, none is more complex or urgent than the formulation of a viable policy of long-term care for the elderly and the chronically ill and disabled. The tragic irony of the existing neglect is clearly evident in the plight of millions of frail and dependent elders, rejected by both Medicare and Medicaid as well as by most private carriers of health insurance, even as the costs of these programs soar.Although many of the current remedial proposals recognize the importance of long-term care, they appear to be prepared to settle for . . .

Harold Frederic's Satanic Soulsby: Interpretation and Sources

EOUR UNDERSTANDING OF THE NATURE of Theron Ware's transformation in The Damnation of Theron Ware remains clouded. While literary historians have tended to read the novel in light of functional precepts of society and human psychology that define American literary realism, a lesser number of critics continue to emphasize the moral ambiguities and judgmental sense of the novel which dissuade such classification. New clarity and a more confidently moralistic interpretation of The Damnation are available to the reader who will focus on what first appears a figure of secondary importance: Sister Candace Soulsby. Her presence pervades the novel with a thematic significance disproportionate to her number of actual appearances. She insinuates and motivates the crucial actions of Theron Ware, and in so doing draws upon herself, and Theron, the most coherent judgments we may be able to find in this designedly ambiguous and problematic novel. To a systematic examination, Sister Soulsby reveals herself the agent of a damnation that has moral as well as social reality. Since Paul Haines's thesis on Harold Frederic in 1945, The Damnation of Theron Ware has been called, in turn, comic realism, tragic irony, and stern moral drama. Haines's decision that Frederic was nominalist, empirical, and opportunist has been refined by such later commentators as John Henry Raleigh, Ralph R. Rogers, Thomas F. O'Donnell and Hoyt Franchere. This view, with its

Ronald Holroyd, 1904 - 1973

It was a tragic irony of fate that Ronald Holroyd should have died on 29 September 1973, just on the eve of the energy crisis which suddenly and dramatically focused the attention of the Western World on the urgency of finding an alternative fuel to Middle East oil, which had almost overnight become scarce and expensive. For the outstanding work of Holroyd s career, before and during the last war, was in attempting to provide a liquid fuel based on coal, and, apart from a wartime success when availability was the paramount consideration, these attempts failed largely because Middle East oil was plentiful and cheap. Ronald Holroyd was born at Horbury, near Wakefield, on 26 April 1904, the son of Sykes and Florence Holroyd. His father started work as a boy of eleven at the firm of Sykes Bros, sporting goods’ manufacturers at Horbury, and attended evening classes at Wakefield where he proved to be a first class student and was subsequently invited to teach in the evenings. This work increased and as a result he was invited to join the full time staff of the Miming and Technical School at Barnsley, where he taught mathematics, mechanics and technical drawing. He had a quick and lively mind which remained with him until he died, a few years ago, at the age of 92, still absorbed in mathematics. Florence Holroyd, his wife, was a teacher and there is no doubt that Ronald Holroyd owed a great deal to their deep interest in educational matters, and to their encouragement in his formative years.

Alienation and Bureaucracy: The Role of Participatory Administration

The tragic irony of the modern era is that some of the institutions originally designed to help men master their world have instead created obstacles to man's endless quest for self-expression, personal efficacy, and human fellowship. These three values form the basis of what people have traditionally sought from their social and political institutions-an opportunity for creative development, a means to control their environment, and a sense of com-

Virgil's Aeneid, a Critical Description

Chapter 1: The Heroic Impulse Chapter 2: Genesis - I. What is the Aeneid about? II. The Task and its Problems III. The Problems Solved Chapter 3: Structure - I. General Description II. Structure of the Twelve Books III. The Episodes IV. Projection of the Narrator into his Narrative V. Parallel and Suspended Narrative VI. Tempo of the Narrative: Tenses Chapter 4: The Twelve Books Chapter 5: Form and Technique - Part 1: Form I. Not only Homer II. Difference in attitude between Virgil and Homer III. The Exploitation of Form IV. Impure Poetry Part 2: Technique I. Gods II. Characterization and Motivation III. Parallel Divine and Psychological Motivation IV. Fate Part 3: The Contribution of Tragedy I. Tragic Attitude II. Tragic Suspense III. Tragic Irony and Insight IV. Implicit Comment Chapter 6: Style - I. Words Alone II. Words in Action (i) The Tradition: (a) Ennius and the Old Poets (b) Catullus and the New Poets (c) A Common Style (ii) Innovation - callida iunctura. (a) Latent Metaphor (b) Archaism brought about by Context (c) Etymological Puns (iii) Ambiguity (iv) Syntactical Ambiguity III. The Virgilian Sentence (i) Metre (ii) Theme and Variation (iii) Subordinate Clauses (iv) Imagery

Reflections of a Governess: Image and Distortion in The Turn of the Screw

T_ _ HE GOVERNESS IN The Turn of the Screw judges her experiences in simplistic moral terms: Miles and Flora are threatened by diabolical fiends and can only be saved by her angelic intervention. In truth, however, the governess not only creates the activities of Peter Quint and Miss Jessel out of her imagination; it is she herself who is the intruding ghost at Bly, carrying out the functions and duties she ascribes to her supposed enemies.' Her puritanical morality requires that salvation can occur only after the confession of sins. And in order to wring a confession from the tortured children, she is forced to act out the parts of their fiendish tempters in order that she may then act out the part of the angelic deliverer and save them. She becomes convinced that Quint and Miss Jessel have returned to gain possession of the children, and, having developed a neat intellectual theory of their behavior, she proceeds unconsciously to fulfill their mission. The tale's tragic irony resides in the fact that the governess succeeds in the first half of her evangelical errand-she leads the children to an