The Irony Notion Of Paul De Man

The object of this dissertation is to explain Paul de Man's irony systematically. As a famous literature theorist and also a critic, De Man's theory of allegory and reading is well-known to many people, but his notion of irony is strange to them. My dissertation could make up for it. It includes three aspects:1.De Man tried to understand the structure of traditional irony concept from the rhetorical relations of the signs.2. He focused on the allegory as an effect produced by the rhetorical production of the senses from the standpoint of post-structuralism. As a result, De Man rethought the nature of irony. He confirmed the identity of irony and allegory, moreover, he found the ironical moments in the texts.3 De Man thought that irony was a part of the totality of rhetoric which belonged to the language and also the basis for people's understanding and knowledge. He grasped processes in which objects were constructed from this point. My dissertation includes three chapters which consist of six sections.The first chapter introduces the forerunner of De Man. The first section describes the origin of irony and its changes. Irony appeared in the ancient tragedy and philosophy as the "eironeia". It was be defined explicitly in the field of roman rhetoric. It describes how Quintilian discussed irony from the angle of trope. It also emphasizes the relation between irony and allegory. The second part explains the irony concept of Schlegel. It was constructed on the ontological basis which included the longing for absolute. His idea was caused by the strategy which be used for the intuition to the absolute. It could be understood abstractedly as the permanent negation between "wit" and "metaphor". The idea influenced De Man's thought of irony deeply. The second chapter introduces De Man's notion of irony. The first section describes the background of his theory. De Man paid attention to the sense and attached it to the intentional structure of the texts. It developed into the study to the rhetorical function of language. I want to compare it with the ideas of Nietzsche and Derrida and introduce the function of media for the substitute which exists between referent and sense. The substitute as a result of De Man's logic can be defined as "reading". The second part describes his deconstruction of the traditional irony. As a rule beyond language, self-reflection is a result of topological function of signs and a rhetoric tool used by "ego".The last chapter explains the main part. De Man had a new opinion for irony. He thought that irony was not so much an imagination of self-transcendental as a special topological process exists in the structure of language. It could delay the acceptation of senses. So it can be identified with allegory at this point. I try to explain the special form of irony and its disruption of the discourse. The function inherited some parts of Schlegel's idea. I also want to explain its representations in the text and the cause for it which was the spread of the anacoluthon. When readings, people frequently substituted their own ideas for objects and find their elements of otherness beyond description. It was irony that finished it. Then, we can understand De Man's new explanation for image, modernism and autobiography.