WORD PLAYS: EVIDENCE OF DRAMATIC IRONY IN THE GOSPEL OF MARK (LITERARY CRITICISM)

In the past fifteen years, literary study has unearthed dramatic and verbal ironies widely distributed in Mark's narrative. This dissertation suggests that two basic intellectual resources have converged to bring those ironies to the surface: sociologists have examined the verbal and conceptual "life-world" assumed by the text, while literary critics have explored the rhetorical strategies by which the text generates new understandings. In actual reading, the interaction of these two factors creates narrative irony. A chapter is devoted to each. A third chapter integrates them into a "rhetoric": Irony is conceptual dissonance resulting from narrative strategies which disclose to the reader critical information denied the story's characters. Competencies generated by each pericope slip over and become the competencies assumed in the following pericopae. The dissonance thus created shapes the reader's perceptions of the story and in that way guides his responses.;Such a reading may hold implications for other scholarly inquiries. A concluding chapter examines the significance of an ironic approach to Mark by focussing on the Messianic Secret.;It is clear from the wide distribution of ironies in his Gospel that Mark is employing such strategies deliberately. Dissonances in the narrative continually set the readers over against the story's characters, and in that way create a disposition to read the narrative in one way rather than another. The result is ultimately apologetic and paradigmatic. An exegesis of Mark explores this proposal.