Romantic Irony

L'objet ironique, tel Protée, ne cesse de se métamorphoser pour se refuser à répondre précisément de sa propre nature. C'est que l'ironie est à la fois objet et méthode d'appréhension, posture critique, distance et soupçon, acte d'énonciation, processus sémantique créatif, pratique existentielle ou encore, entre autres, exercice philosophique qui joue l'aventure du sens « entre centre et absence ». Mode d'actualisation de l'art et de la pensée, l'ironie ne cesse de se (re)définir à travers les âges et les courants littéraires. Le présent ouvrage propose une approche transhistorique, transgénérique et transdisciplinaire de la notion, où sont appréhendés différents terrains épistémologiques et esthétiques, privilégiant cependant une étude des liens du procès linguistique et du projet poétique. S'y développe une interrogation relative aux possibles relations, continuités éventuelles, divergences voire oppositions entre les domaines, à partir des notions de dualité et de duplicité, qu'elles portent sur l'ethos de l'ironiste ou sur le double sens qu'implique l'ironie.

The aim of the paper is to analyze the Hegelian interpretation of the notion of “irony” in the light of its evolution thorough the Berlin courses and in a comparison with the edition of the Ästhetik published by Hotho. The analysis of the last course of the 1828-29 is of particular importance, because there the notion of irony, which traditionally appears to be harshly criticized by Hegel, is taken as a decisive moment for the very concept of art. In this course, Hegel explicitly distinguishes between a “practical irony”, which he continues to criticize, and an irony that we could define as “artistic” or “aesthetic”, which he instead assumes as a significant moment in the constitution of the ideal. The discussion of this course can lead to a redefinition of Hegel’s interpretation of irony as it has been established by much of the critical tradition.

In diesem Buch wird Hegels Phänomenologie des Geistes als ein literarischer Text gedeutet, der seine Überzeugungskraft aus der Lektüre anderer Texte schöpft. Untersucht werden die politischen und ästhetischen Konsequenzen dieser Interpretation. Das dialektische Philosophieren ist ein Bedürfnis, die vergangenen Gedankensysteme – die Texte – in ihrer eigenen Logik als mangelhafte aufzuweisen und zu überwinden, um dadurch die letzte spekulative Synthese zu etablieren. Aber dieselbe Operation macht – so die Hauptthese des Buches – das Spekulative selbst verwundbar, das damit in seiner unselbständigen Verfassung und in seinem Scheitern aufgewiesen wird. Die im Buch dargestellten Gesten des Anleihens und der Affinität sind nicht nur für Hegels Stil prägend. Sie können auch das Dialektische selber neu bestimmen – als eine verschwindende, fast unmögliche Stimme, eine Bemühung, aus der Verschränkung unvereinbarer, konfligierender Diskurse einen Sinn zu gewinnen.

In this essay I briefly survey central aspects of the modern concept of fashion that in the period around 1800 were not only relevant to the debate about fashion itself but also in Romantic thought. What is especially significant for the modern is the idea that fashion is a medium of individuality, which for its part is important in civil society as a characteristic feature of an educated citizenry. This development away from a condemnation of fashion as something purely superficial to a new functional definition based on political and economic considerations is presented in the first half of the paper. It is followed by a second key concept in fashion. Temporality is of crucial importance both for fashion itself and for current fashion happenings in particular. Firstly, the perception of temporality and temporal development of fashion happenings is a condition of understanding fashion conceptually. And secondly temporality is a central element for modern fashion creation, as time itself is made visible in the products of fashion. This should illustrate how the ‘temporality’ of fashion has similarities to central concepts of the Romantics, especially Romantic irony.

H παρούσα μελέτη παρουσιάζει την βαθιά καινοτόμα ρομαντική οπτική γωνία στον κόσμο και τα πράγματα. Ειδικότερα εισάγει τον έλληνα αναγνώστη στις θεωρητικές αρχές και τους φιλοσοφικούς/ ποιητολογικούς προβληματισμούς καθώς και τις βασικές θεματικές και τους τρόπους γραφής των γερμανών ρομαντικών. Η μελέτη εντάσσει τον γερμανικό ρομαντισμό στο ιστορικό και φιλοσοφικό-ιδεολογικό πλαίσιο της εποχής του και αναστοχάζεται πάνω στην «κληρονομιά» του προς τα μεταγενέστερα αισθητικά κινήματα.
Ως ένα παράδειγμα της διαχρονικότητας του ρομαντισμού προτείνεται  μια θεώρηση των κειμένων του Γεώργιου Βιζυηνού «υπό ρομαντική οπτική γωνία», η σκιαγράφηση μιας εκλεκτικής συγγένειας. Η γοητεία του θαυμαστού, τα απραγματοποίητα ταξίδια και οι ανεκπλήρωτοι έρωτες, η αρχή της υπέρβασης και της ερμηνείας που απαντούν στα κείμενα του Βιζυηνού συνθέτουν το καθοριστικό για το έργο του σχήμα της διαρκούς εναλλαγής μεταξύ προσδοκίας και απογοήτευσης – την αέναη κίνηση του εκκρεμούς της ρομαντικής ειρωνείας.

Perhaps the crucial question concerning irony is a hermeneutic one: how do you know when irony is at work in a proposition? When the concept was initially defined by the ancient thinkers, it was placed on a solid base of intentionality. Plato preferred the spoken language, as it is always possible to ask an interlocutor what he meant when using certain words. According to Plato in Phaedrus, a written text remains silent if you put a question to it; hence, it is inferior as a philosophical instrument. Since this hermeneutics of intention clearly dominates the world of classical antiquity, it is not hard to see why almost all the early theories about irony focus on the spoken language.1 The question of how to reveal irony is simply reduced to a question of how to interpret the speaker's gestures and mimicry. You hear him say one thing; but if he pulls faces at the same time, you may suspect that he means something else-and if you feel uncertain, you just ask him what he actually means. Then you are on safe ground as far as irony is concerned. Unless, of course, he tells you a lie ....

Divine Madness provides a theory that enables the concept of irony to be transferred from the literary to the visual and aural domains. Two stories are being told. One is a story of how literary conceptualization has conquered the fields of the other arts and the other is a story of how literary conceptualization, conversely, has been successively relativized. Elleström provides a survey of the historical roots of the concept of irony as well as a discussion of two hermeneutical "options": irony as a mode of oral communication and irony as a mode of literary expression. The author examines how irony is classified and how it is used as an interpretive strategy rather than a "textual trait" intended by an author. Other concepts such as paradox, mysticism and deconstruction are also evaluated in terms of their relation to irony. Elleström concludes by demonstrating that ironic interpretations of not just music are intimately connected to norms, values, and even political stances that tend to be hidden behind an allegedly objective terminology - a terminology that has its roots in the comprehension of irony as an intentional, oral phenomenon.

En este capítulo, expondré la teoría de Linda Hutcheon de Irony’s Edge: The Theory and Politics of Irony, pero, para tener una lectura contextualizada de esta exposición, presento primero una breve historia del término ironía, desde la ironía socrática hasta la renovación teórica durante el Romanticismo y los nuevos enfoques modernos y posmodernos, acompañados por las teorías neorretóricas en el siglo XX. En la segunda parte, me avoco a exponer los conceptos que Linda Hutcheon adopta en su teoría de la ironía, como son: su filo evaluativo, su naturaleza transideológica, sus funciones, sus características semánticas, las comunidades discursivas del intérprete, la relación entre la intencionalidad y la interpretación y los contextos y marcas de la ironía

I. HISTORIA Y TEORÍA DE LA IRONÍA
1. Breve viaje en la historia del término
___a. La gran definición histórica
___b. El Romanticismo y el cambio de paradigma
___c. La modernidad y la posmodernidad
___d. Posturas neorretóricas
2. La red irónica: Irony’s Edge de Linda Hutcheon
___a. El filo evaluativo
___b. Naturaleza transideológica
___c. Funciones
___d. Características semánticas
___e. Comunidades discursivas
___f. Intencionalidad e interpretación
___g. Contextos y marcas irónicas
______I) Contextos
______II) Marcas

En el horizonte de una investigación amplia acerca de las solidaridades entre configuraciones de lenguaje –especialmente formas poéticas de significación– y maneras de concebir lo real o habitar el mundo –incluida la experiencia de la temporalidad–  se interrogarán las formas de articulación y comprensión históricas en la poética del modernismo angloamericano, concentrándose en la lectura de obras literarias y críticas de T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound y James Joyce. Considerando la conciencia aguda que muestran estos autores de las relaciones entre sus formas de experimentación lingüística radical y modos de conocimiento, el seminario gravitará en torno a una serie de estrategias poéticas, a menudo superpuestas, que pueden ser agrupadas bajo tres rúbricas principales: ‘ironía’ (escepticismo y entusiasmo, negación y superación crítica, aufhebung), ‘montaje’ (fragmentación y discontinuidad, método mítico y sincronización temporal), y ‘traducción’ (sobrevida, despliegue del pasado). La contraparte subjetiva de tales figuras (o, anti-subjetiva, si se quiere) será examinada a partir de sus concepciones del autor/hablante como un catalizador más o menos impersonal (ausencia de intencionalidad, personae, desdoblamiento crítico). Se propone dilucidar así la especificidad de una poética vanguardista que, confrontada a la crisis del discurso de la modernidad y a diferencia de otros movimientos que le fueron contemporáneos, no pretendió una ruptura simple con el pasado, sino un distanciamiento y reabsorción a través de estrategias de disyunción y superposición. En último término, se tendrá que evaluar hasta qué punto esta poética de la historia, que se forja entre las primeras décadas del siglo XX y el comienzo de la Segunda Guerra (y corresponde a lo que nosotros solemos entender como postmodernismo más que como modernismo), es una de la que aún se está intentando salir, o acaso tan sólo desplegar en lo que ha dejado pendiente.

The age of irony is over. Irony is degenerating into a kind of
disclaimer of liability – an escape manoeuvre that tries to wriggle out of any responsibility. Now, though, people are seeking to return to an existence that is unfractured and direct and in which things are what they appear to be. - We are standing at the verge of something wondrous: the rebirth of our self-creation. Post-irony means total imaginative and creative freedom.

L’ironia rappresenta oggi uno dei caratteri distintivi dell’Orlando furioso. Eppure quell’ironia che Ariosto ha infuso in modo consapevole e magistrale nel suo capolavoro venne misconosciuta per secoli e non fu apprezzata se non molto tardi. Per quali motivi? Quando e dove ha inizio la sua valorizzazione?

Il libro ricostruisce per la prima volta la storia (e la “preistoria”) letteraria e figurativa dell’ironia ariostesca: nel panorama europeo essa assume diversi volti, passando dalle illustrazioni e dai dipinti del Cinque e Seicento italiano alla Francia di La Fontaine, Voltaire e Fragonard, nonché alla straordinaria stagione ariostesca di Wieland e dei romantici tedeschi (Schiller, Friedrich Schlegel, Schelling), per approdare infine - dopo De Sanctis, Pirandello e Croce - ai rapporti più segreti che intrattiene con il primo romanzo di Calvino.

La tesi centrale è che la riscoperta moderna dell’ironia del Furioso avvenga ben prima dell’Estetica di Hegel, diversamente da quanto si conosce. All’idea di ironia romantica si può ricondurre il concetto di ‘ironia della finzione’ (Fiktionsironie), di cui vengono analizzati le implicazioni storiche e teoriche, i risvolti interpretativi e la funzione (ancora oggi attuale) di “mettere in prospettiva” la realtà per farcela osservare, attraverso una finzione consapevole, da punti di vista diversi.

http://www.marsilioeditori.it/libri/scheda-libro/3172111/ariosto-e-l-ironia-della-finzione

The present investigation offers a synthesis of Ezra Pound’s contribution to the translation of poetry. After a prefatory “Exergue,” the thesis follows a tripartite division based on the understanding that there can be no sustained translation practice without both a poetics and an ideology.

Part One –“Transportation of the Poetic Meaning (searching for principles)”– shows how Pound’s departure from the philological method and his holistic conception of meaning in poetry –‘plain sense’ charged by melopoeia, phanopoeia and/or logopoeia– requires a differential approach to translation that varies according to the literary values privileged in the rendering of an original, and explains the primary strategies Pound devised: ‘translations of accompaniment’ and ‘creative translations’.

Part Two –“A Differential Strategy of Translation (examining the performances)”– samples Pound’s translations from a variety of languages (especially Provençal, Chinese via Fenollosa, French and Classical Latin) in order to analyse Pound’s methods of transmitting poetic devices pertaining to melopoeia, phanopoeia, and logopoeia respectively.

Part Three –“Transportation is Civilisation (unfolding the implications)”– examines the cultural ramifications of Pound’s translation project, which was grounded in a plea for an international civilisation opposing provincialisms of ‘space’ and ‘time’. This section focuses on the ways in which Pound thought translation, through its very technical ‘donation’, impacts the receiving language and culture (strengthening its perception and expanding its world-view), and revives the voices of the past which criticise and shape the present.

Finally, an “Epilogue” –“Towards The Cantos as a translation performance”– discusses the ways in which Pound’s translation project, position and ideology help us to understand the texture, the structure, the historical economy and the very programme of his lifelong epic.

In un’epoca sempre più segnata da una crisi politica e culturale
italiana ed europea, Ariosto seppe trasfondere la
propria lucida indagine delle dinamiche umane, sociali e
civili in opere la cui perfezione formale e il cui mondo finzionale
e fantastico non rappresentano dimensioni fini a
sé stesse, ma piuttosto strutture nuove e moderne, capaci
di veicolare costantemente lo sguardo sulla realtà. L’Orlando
furioso, il suo capolavoro, ispirando in tutta Europa
non soltanto la creazione di nuove opere ma anche riflessioni
e scoperte critiche, teoriche ed estetiche, ha contribuito
in modo sostanziale al cammino verso la modernità.

"Militante e/ou escritor: ironias migueisianas" in Ernesto Rodrigues (éd.) et Rui Sousa (org.), A Dinâmica dos Olhares. Cem Anos de Literatura e Cultura em Portugal, Lisboa, CLEPUL, 2017.

A produção ficcional migueisiana em livro, que se prolonga por quase cinquenta anos não pode ser dividida cronologicamente em fases literárias correspondentes às fases da vida do escritor mas deve ser definida como a resultante original de dois modos de escrita que se sucederam e/ou se sobrepuseram: um “modo militante”, baseado num compromisso  ético e político ao serviço de um ideal de sociedade mais justa, modo de oposição aberta a uma ordem social injusta, onde a literatura de ficção é concebida como uma ferramenta de transformação social à disposição do militante político, onde as narrativas querem-se
realistas, onde a intenção pedagógica está no centro do projecto literário, e onde a ironia clássica, utilizada mais frequentemente com fins satíricos, em processos facilmente observáveis no corpo do texto, é um dos instrumentos privilegiados; e um “modo escritor”, mais baseado na dúvida e na liberdade do escritor, onde Miguéis, exilado primeiro do seu país natal e depois do seu activismo político, interroga a complexidade do mundo e da realidade, entre a autobiografia e a ficção, exprime um questionamento existencial e identitário, sinal de um relacionamento bastante trágico com o mundo e que, por sua vez, questiona o próprio
acto de escrever, mostrando uma ironia literária mais moderna.

This is the Introduction to 'Aesthetic Afterlives', my monograph about Aestheticism, it's theoretical foundations, and its fate in the twentieth century. The book argues that Paterian Aestheticism was the inheritor of competing traditions in German Romantic aesthetics. First, Schlegel's aesthetics of Romantic irony and the fragment, which was subsequently demonised by Hegel as a performance of compulsive detachment. Second, a Hellenist tradition of radical sensuousness that worked as a solution to the alienated Kantian model of aesthetic subjectivity. Pater translated German Hellenism into a Dionysian affirmation of sensuous life that broke the boundaries of aesthetic autonomy and cultivated detachment. These competing sides of Paterian aestheticism became a suspended dialectic in Aestheticism's twentieth century afterlives. Crucially, this was a dialectic without resolution. In the narrative I trace there is a clear divide between the proponents of Dionysian vitalism and radical aesthetic autonomy, but both demonstrate the necessity of their opposites. Two central chapters, beginning with a reading of Katherine Mansfield, followed by Lawrence's 'The Rainbow' and 'Women in Love', are central to the theoretical narrative of 'Aesthetic Afterlives. Whilst Lawrence could promote an affirmation of Dionysian sensuousness as a direct solution to an aesthetic subjectivity conceived as compulsive irony, autonomy, and detachment, his work placed Aestheticism in a sacrificial position. The violence of Lawrence's disavowal makes a compelling argument for the maintenance of a Wildean Aestheticism conceived of in terms of radical irony. Mansfield was one of the few writers who attempted to maintain Aestheticism's devotions to both irony and sensuous revival. At the same time, post-Paterians from Henry James to Alan Hollinghurst dramatised the agonies of an ironic consciousness, which emerges in James's work as mimetic aspiration towards the deathly condition of the autonomous art-work. Throughout the book,  I argue that both sides of the critique of Aestheticism which emerged in James and later Modernist writing were implicit in Aestheticism itself. Pater internalised Hegel's critique of Romantic irony and his Hegelian self-doubt was imagined as the condition I described as 'Aesthetic Vampirism'. After tracing this dual thematic of aesthetic alienation and sensuous revival through works by Mansfield, Waugh, Beckett, and Hollinghurst, the book returns to the condition of Aesthetic Vampirism by transforming into a pastiche vampire narrative, which allows me to asses the position of aestheticism in contemporary fiction.

En el horizonte de una aproximación comparativa a los rendimientos trascendentales del poema –las formas de significación poética como síntesis y puesta en común de mundos posibles–, el seminario examinará las maneras en que la figuración estético-literaria funda experiencias sui generis de lo real en cosmovisiones determinadas, poniendo especial atención a las configuraciones del ‘espacio metafísico’ y del ‘tiempo histórico’.

Tras un breve exergo –donde la constatación de las solidaridades básicas que se disciernen entre ‘concepciones de la creación del mundo’ y ‘formas de creación en el poema’ buscará dejar instalada la pregunta acerca de las relaciones fundacionales entre lenguaje poético y constitución de mundo–, un primer bloque introductorio del seminario estará dedicado a precisar el rendimiento trascendental de la imaginación poética, centrándose en al menos tres aspectos: (i) un examen del desplazamiento de la revolución crítica desde la subjetividad al lenguaje; (ii) una fenomenología del acontecimiento que constituye la creación de una ‘forma’ en la singularidad del poema (producción de lo aún-no-sido y consiguiente posibilidad de reconfiguración de la experiencia); y (iii) una revisión de los tipos de síntesis de lo real o partición de lo sensible que se disciernen en las diversas formas de significación del lenguaje poético (llanas, musicales, imagísticas, contextuales, escriturales, textuales y otras).

Una vez establecida esta perspectiva y herramientas de trabajo en el bloque introductorio, el grueso del seminario a seguir estará dedicado a examinar comparativamente cómo diversas ‘figuraciones’ dominantes en tradiciones poéticas características han constituido ‘con-figuraciones’ espacio-temporales reconocibles, lo que supondrá interrogar una serie de continuidades fundacionales entre sus ‘formas de imagen literaria’ y sus respectivos ‘conceptos de mundo’.
Así, en un segundo bloque, el análisis comparativo se concentrará en el gran quiebre que se discierne entre las configuraciones ‘míticas’ y las configuraciones ‘históricas’ de lo real, lo que, por añadidura, supondrá interrogar el rol catalizador y los problemas estético-filosóficos que plantea la irrupción de las formas y pensamiento de la escritura, la revolución gramatológica de la concepción de mundo.

En un tercer y cuarto bloques, a su vez, instalados ya en el legado de las cosmovisiones históricas y sin perder jamás de vista la estricta singularidad del poema, el análisis comparativo interrogará el gran contraste que se observa entre las síntesis del espacio metafísico y del tiempo histórico en el ‘movimiento de sustitución de la metáfora’, de una parte, tal como ha dominado en grandes momentos de la poética occidental, y en el ‘proceso de correlaciones vibratorias de la imagen dinámica’, de otra, que halla un momento ejemplar en la poética clásica china. En el tercer bloque de trabajo, donde se interrogarán desde las figuraciones poéticas del espacio fenoménico a las configuraciones de la estructura metafísica, se examinará el contraste entre lo metafórico-ontológico (la síntesis de una metafísica dualista, sustitutiva y jerárquica) y lo imagístico-correlativo (la síntesis de una metafísica inmanente, correlativa y horizontal). En el cuarto, donde se interrogarán desde las figuraciones poéticas del tiempo fenoménico a las configuraciones del tiempo histórico, se examinará el contraste entre lo metafórico-teleológico (la síntesis del tiempo como ‘movimiento’ y ‘desplazamiento’ discreto hacia un fin y sentido inteligible) y lo imagístico-vibratorio (la síntesis del tiempo como ‘flujo’ y ‘proceso’ de resonancias dinámicas).
Si esta última figuración propia de la ‘imagen dinámica’ fue traducida e irrumpió con fuerza inaudita en Occidente a comienzos del siglo XX, decantando en las formas del ‘montaje’ moderno, en un último o quinto bloque se trataría de discernir hasta qué punto la experimentación poética radical y consiguientes posibilidades de experiencia que trajo esta nueva síntesis por fragmentación y yuxtaposición de lo real permitieron no sólo la revolución estética de las vanguardias artísticas, sino también una nueva configuración metafísica (trascendencia en la inmanencia) y articulación de la dispersión temporal (sentido histórico no-intencional e interruptivo) que constituyeron maneras efectivas de lidiar con la crisis de las concepciones del dualismo ontológico y de la ideología del progreso en que había desembocado la Modernidad tardía.

El trabajo de seminario será desarrollado a partir de un contrapunto permanente entre la lectura de ‘consideraciones teóricas’ (de filosofía y poética) sobre los diversos aspectos de las relaciones lenguaje-mundo a ser tratados y el examen atento de ‘poemas escogidos’ para cada instancia de interrogación. En lo que respecta a la perspectiva teórico-crítica, se leerán textos breves de: Platón, Aristóteles, Lu Chi, Liu Xie, W. von Humboldt, E. Fenollosa, F. Nietzsche, W. Benjamin, E. Cassirer, M. Heidegger, H. G. Gadamer, P. Ricoeur, J. Derrida, J. Rancière, R. Jakobson, M. Bajtín, A. Danto, H. White, F. Jullien, S. Mallarmé, P. Valéry, E. Pound, T. S. Eliot y J. L. Borges. En lo que respecta al corpus poético-literario, se leerán pasajes y poemas de: anónimos mesopotámicos y hebreos, Píndaro, Homero, Horacio, Propercio, Virgilio, Li Po, Du Fu, Wang Wei, trovadores (especialmente G. de Aquitania, B. Ventadorn, B. de Born y A. Daniel), Dante, G. Cavalcanti, Ch. Baudelaire, A. Rimbaud, P. Verlaine, J. Laforgue, S. Mallarmé, P. Valéry, T. S. Eliot, E. Pound y J. Joyce.

El Monólogo de Friedrich von Hardenberg (Novalis) fue considerado con frecuencia (desde 1960 y Die romantische Ironie in Theorie und Gestaltung de StrohschneiderKohrs) un ejemplo notable de puesta en práctica de la “ironía” romántica. Sin negar la legitimidad de las perspectivas que detectan en el ensayo determinados elementos irónicos, aquí se considera, sin embargo, que, como se señalara hace poco tiempo (Bergengruen 2014), no se trata de un texto que exprese en última instancia una perspectiva compatible con la de la ironía romántica. Se sugiere que este pretendido alejamiento, en términos globales, respecto de la ironía en el Monólogo, puede ser tenido por una evidencia, entre otras, de un fenómeno que en la producción “tardía” de Novalis es una tendencia característica y no un caso aislado.

Friedrich von Hardenbergs (Novalis’) Monologue has often been considered (since 1960 and Strohschneider-Kohrs’ Die romantische Ironie in Theorie und Gestaltung) a noteworthy example of implementation of romantic “irony”. Without denying the legitimacy of such approaches that identify certain ironic elements, here it is stated, nevertheless, that (as recently asserted: Bergengruen 2014), this text does not ultimately express a perspective compatible with that of romantic irony. I suggest that this alleged distancing from irony in Novalis’ Monologue can be considered a case, among others,of a fact that in “late” Novalis’ production is far more a characteristic tendency than an isolated case.

El trabajo reconstruye el concepto de ironía del crítico de origen belga Paul De Man a los fines de mostrar algunos supuestos filosóficos que emplea para su conceptualización. Concentramos el análisis en su conferencia de 1977 que póstumamente fue publicada con el nombre “El concepto de ironía”. El objetivo es evidenciar los elementos y herramientas conceptuales que De Man emplea para abordar este concepto de origen romántico. Finalmente, empleamos algunos comentaristas de su obra para estimar las consecuencias y alcances de esta conferencia tan citada y comentada.

This article reevaluates Michael Fried’s antitheatrical aesthetics—expounded primarily in “Art and Objecthood” (1967) and Absorption and Theatricality (1980)—by constellating Fried’s work alongside Péter Szondi’s writings on modern drama and Paul de Man’s theories of allegory. This theoretical juxtaposition reveals, first, that the phenomenon Fried describes as “absorption” parallels a form of mimetic, bourgeois drama hegemonic in European theatre from the time of Diderot to Ibsen, and second, that Fried’s concept of “theatricality” corresponds significantly to the notion of 􏰀allegory􏰁 developed in de Man’s work. Fried’s writings thus advance a theory of modernity organized around the rise and fall of mimesis in performance, one in which mimetic drama comes programmatically to eclipse allegory and theatricality during the Enlightenment, only to then fall into crisis around the turn of the twentieth century with the rise of modernism, understood as a moment marked by the reemergence of allegory and theatricality in the arts. In this way, Fried’s views of theatricality overlap considerably with the origins of postdramatic theatre demonstrated influentially in theatre studies by Hans-Thies Lehmann, and these overlaps require our field to rethink now well-established positions on Fried and Lehmann alike. A new view of theatre history is required, one that accounts both for the emergence of supposedly postdramatic forms and for this general reappearance of theatricality and allegory in modern times.

Il saggio costituisce una prima versione della seconda parte del I capitolo del mio libro: "Il dialogo dei tre massimi sistemi. Le Ultime lettere di Jacopo Ortis fra il Werther e la Nuova Eloisa. Esso costituisce un'analisi della Notizia bibliografia annessa da Foscolo all'edizione zurighese delle Ultime lettere di Jacopo Ortis, e spiega che Foscolo ha concepito il proprio romanzo come il perfezionamento di un nuovo “genere” romanzesco, inventato da Rousseau con la "Nouvelle Héloïse" e da Goethe col "Werther". La nascente poetica dell’originalità e dell’espressività impedisce a Foscolo di ammettere pienamente questo debito. Ma questa stessa poetica lo spinge a evidenziare la novità del suo impegno politico e del suo pessimismo ontologico e a sottolineare la grandezza morale del suo personaggio.

The essay shows that Foscolo has conceived his only novel (Ultime lettere di Jacopo Ortis) as an improved example of a new novelistic genre, that has come to the fore with Rousseau’s Nouvelle Héloïse and Goethe’s Werther. The rising poetics of expressivism and originality prevents Foscolo from fully recognizing his debt towards these two writers. This very poetics leads him, however, to underline the novelty of his political engagement and ontological pessimism, as well as the moral superiority of his hero, when compared to the main characters of his forerunners.

Abstract [en]
This dissertation explores the intimate relationship between irony and romantic subjectivity, by drawing on feminist psychoanalytical theory, via an examination of the shiftings of irony, and humor, in the works of the Swedish romanticist P. D. A. Atterbom (1790–1855). It looks at the critical role played by irony in the formation of Romantic subjectivity, and explores irony’s potential to undermine dualistically gendered notions of subject-object relations. For Atterbom, irony is an aesthetic concept closely related to drama, informed not only by German Romantic-ironic theorists such as Friedrich Schlegel and Jean Paul, but also by the works of Shakespeare, Ludwig Tieck, and E. T. A. Hoffmann.

The thesis follows the shiftings of Romantic irony in Atterbom’s major literary texts: the cycle of poems Blommorna [The Flowers] (1811), where the Ovidian transformations are used metafictively to play with the relation between poet, poem, and reader; and the literary satire Rimmarbandet [The Rhyme Band] (1810), which, inspired by Tieck’s Der Gestiefelte Kater (1797), uses the metafictive theatre-in-the-theatre motif, as well as carnivalesque and grotesque motifs to expose contrived theatricality and homosocial misogyny in the prevailing culture. The dynamic between the satirist’s subject and the attacked object is a polarized power struggle, where revolt is followed by submission. In this respect, Romantic satire is here conservative. In the fairy tale play Lycksalighetens ö [Island of Felicity] (1824–27), tragedy’s irony is a dialectic between the ideal and the real that strives to create both inner and outer renewal. The play reaches out metafictively to the reader and turns her/him into the poet of a new version of the fairy tale. The reading/writing process inscribed in the work thus becomes a form of renewal and liberation from grief, and old, patriarchal gender roles. Finally, the humorous, unfinished idyll Fågel Blå [Blue Bird] (1814, 1818, 1858) is a work in many pieces, a fragment, a sketch and a non finito that together stages a restorative creative process, where the reader is asked to take part in joining together the scattered parts of Blue Bird itself.

To conclude, irony is a feature of Romanticism, which makes the Romantic, literary subject relational and dialogical, open to its Other, and herein lies a form of ethics and an escape from a conventional, patriarchal notion of the self. I discuss this with Julia Kristeva’s theories on how subjectivity changes when it becomes poetic and Jessica Benjamin’s Winnicott-influenced theory of how play can offer a way out from patriarchy’s strict gender roles. The shiftings of irony in Atterbom’s work show a development from the satirical subject, where an aggressive form of self-assertion conceals a lack of individuality – via tragedy’s painstaking efforts to integrate repressed aspects of the self – to the idyll’s more harmonious subject, who has the capacity to laugh at him/herself and see both the grotesque in the holy, and the holy in the grotesque.

In: Natalia Igl / Sonja Zeman (eds.): Perspectives on Narrativity and Narrative Perspectivization. (Linguistic Approaches to Literature 21) Amsterdam, Philadelphia: Benjamins, p. 91-114.

The book-chapter aims to illustrate the dynamic functioning of the recursive double-layered structure – which this volume sets as constitutive for the narrative discourse – by means of exemplary analysis of complex strategies of perspectivization in narrative texts. The focus of the chapter thus lies on the narrative macrostructure on the one hand and the relation between narrative micro- and macrostructure on the other.
The key premise of this chapter is the proposition that meta-discursive strategies reveal the underlying double structure of narrative discourse, since they are based on the constitutive distance between the narrator- and character-level (cf. Zeman, this volume). In order to display the recursive embedding of perspectives and the crucial function of the narrator as a dynamic instance of mediation, evaluation and perception, the chapter introduces a three-staged model of narrative communication. This model builds the foundation for the two exemplary analyses of narrative texts which show a very distinct presence and manner of their respective narrator: E.T.A. Hoffmann’s Romantic-era novella The Golden Pot (orig. Der goldne Topf, 1814) and Wolf Haas’ contemporary series of detective novels.

Keywords: perspectivization, macrostructure, metanarration, metafiction, metalepsis, distance, mediation, perception, oberver, dynamic relation, modernism, irony, text-world, storyworld, cognitive poetics

This essay re-examines Kierkegaard’s view of Socrates. I consider the problem that arises from Kierkegaard’s appeal to Socrates as an exemplar for irony. The problem is that he also appears to think that Socrates cannot be represented as an exemplar for irony. Part of the problem is the paradox of self-reference that immediately arises from trying to represent x as unrepresentable. On the solution I propose, Kierkegaard does not hold that Socrates is in no way representable as an exemplar for irony. Rather, he holds that Socrates cannot be represented as an exemplar for irony in a purely disinterested way. I show how, in The Concept of Irony, Kierkegaard makes use of “limiting cases” of representation in order to bring Socrates into view as one who defies purely disinterested representation. I also show how this approach to Socrates connects up with Kierkegaard’s more general interest in the problem of ethical exemplarity, where the problem is how ethical exemplars can be given as such—that is, in such a way that purely disinterested contemplation is not the appropriate response to them.

As noções de palavra nova, anelo por realismo e ironia existencial enformam este estudo de passos de Tucídides e Políbio que reconstroem historicamente as circunstâncias dos fracassos de Nícias e de Aníbal. Por meio de abordagem comparativa e histórico-filológica, o artigo investiga a possibilidade hermenêutica de aquela ironia enformar narrativas históricas.

Carnap famously argued that metaphysics unavoidably involves a confusion between science and poetry. Unlike the lyric poet, who does not attempt to make an argument, the metaphysician attempts to make an argument while simultaneously lacking in musical talent. Carnap’s objection that metaphysics unavoidably involves a blend of philosophy and poetry is not a 20th century insight. Plato, in his beautifully crafted Phaedo, presents us with the imprisoned Socrates, who having been condemned to death for practicing philosophy in the Apology, has a dream in which he realizes that he ought to make music. In this dialogue, however, Plato indicates no hint of the scorn that Carnap has for metaphysics—rather Socrates’ friends find him setting Aesop’s fables to verse. In the modern era, Nietzsche re-introduced the ‘music making Socrates’ in his Birth of Tragedy. But Nietzsche is not the first to revive the concept in modern philosophy. Before Nietzsche’s call for a new music-making Socrates, the early German Romantics, in particular Schlegel, explicitly called for the identification of poetry and science in the concept of Poesie. As Schlegel writes: ‘Alle Kunst soll Wissenschaft werden, und alle Wissenschaft Kunst werden; Poesie und Philosophie sollen vereinigt sein.’ On the one hand, in Ion Socrates is not wrong to critique Ion for not knowing the significance of his own work.  On the other hand, Socrates himself recognizes in Phaedo that he is guilty of failing to heed the call to make music. Long misunderstood, the Romantic concept of Poesie is not mere irrationalism, for it offers an aesthetic metaphysics of the Absolute that recognizes that the Absolute can only exist if it is known. Romanticism is indeed a philosophy of the Absolute, but one which cannot conceive of any solution to the profound impasses that confront philosophical knowing except by learning to make music.

Статья посвящена влиянию Гейне на поэзию Ходасевича. Хотя русская литературная традиция для Ходасевича была важнее, чем европейская, в его лирике обнаруживается ощутимый пласт поэзии Гейне. Обращение к Гейне в ранних стихах Ходасевича можно охарактеризовать как поверхностное. Оно необходимо либо для ироничного изображения любви (“Стихи о кузине”), либо для описания типизированного немецкого города (“В немецком городке”). В стихах “Тяжелой лиры” (1920-1922 гг.) усвоение Гейне оказывается более глубоким. Ходасевич, с одной стороны, развивает едкую гейневскую иронию (“Жизель”), а с другой — усваивает его романтическое отношение к любовной теме (“Странник прошел, опираясь на посох…”). Соседство в рамках книги как смыслового единства двух тематически близких любовных стихотворений, трактующих тему в противоположных — ироничном и романтическом — модусах, несомненно, индикатор влияния Гейне. Это не отменяет и переосмысления ряда гейновских тем в таких стихах, как “Анюте”, “Улика”, “Горит звезда, дрожит эфир…”. Новый этап усвоения поэтики Гейне наметился у Ходасевича в эмиграции. Помимо “Баллады”, показательно в этом плане стихотворение “Старик и девочка горбунья…”, в поэтике которого аккумулируются характерные для немецкой поэзии темы в целом и стихи Гейне в частности. Вместе с тем, влияние Гейне здесь осложняется тематическим влиянием немецких экспрессионистов. Эта новая, сатирическая и социальная, линия усвоения стихов немецкого поэта не получила своего развития в творчестве Ходасевича, и в его эмигрантских стихах мы больше не обнаруживаем обращения к Гейне. Что же касается немецких экспрессионистов, то, по-видимому, Ходасевич в некоторой степени испытал влияние их поэзии, однако его нельзя признать существенным.

This article is dedicated to the influence of Heinrich Heine on the poetry of Vladislav Khodasevich. Although for Khodasevich the Russian literary tradition was more important than the European tradition, in his lyric poetry tangible influence of Heine’s poetry can be found. However, links to Heine in Khodasevich’s early poetry can be characterized as superficial and are manifested in either in ironic depictions of love (“Verses about a Cousin”) or for the description of a stylized German city (“In a German Small Town”). In the poetry collection The Heavy Lyre (1922) the assimilation of Heine is deeper. Khodasevich on the one hand develops scathing irony after the fashion of Heine (“Gisele”), and, on the other hand he adopts Heine’s romantic treatment of love themes (“The Wanderer Passed, Leaning on his Staff”). There is a proximity within the framework of the book of a sense of a unity of two thematically similar love poems, which treat the theme of love in opposing ways — ironically and romantically. These are modalities that are probably the result of the influence of Heine. This does not annul the reworking of a range of Heine’s themes in such poems as “To Anyuta,” “Evidence,” and “The Star Shines, the Ether Trembles”. The outlines of a new stage of Khodasevich’s assimilation of Heine’ occur in the former’s emigration. Alongside “Ballad” this trend can be noted in in the poem “The Old Man and the Hunchback Girl,” in which the poetics take on characteristics of German poetry in general, and Heine’s poetry more particularly. Together with this, Heine’s influence here makes complicates the thematic influence of German expressionists. This new satirical and social adoption of the German poet failed to find its development in Khodasevich’s work and in his poetry written in emigration we do not find any more references to Heine. In regards to German expressionists, evidently Khodasevich, to some extent, experienced the influence of their poetry. However one cannot interpret this as fundamental to his work.

This text is a preview of the English version of the introduction to Christian Rivoletti, Ariosto e l’ironia della finzione: la ricezione letteraria e figurativa dell’Orlando furioso in Francia, Germania e Italia (Venice: Marsilio, 2014). The complete translation and publication of this work is currently in preparation.

This article aims to illuminate Hegel’s characterization of Antigone as «the eternal irony of the community», which notably appears in his 'Phenomenology of Spirit'. Thanks to a comparison with other kinds of irony that are present in Hegel’s thought (i.e. Socratic irony, on the one hand, and Romantic irony, on the other), I will identify and describe the particular version of irony that defines Sophocles’ character. Antigone’s irony, I will argue, certainly belongs to antiquity, in some ways even more than Socratic irony; however, at the same time, Antigone’s irony exhibits some elements that place it at the very beginning of the path that culminates in the constitution of modernity.

In der Einleitung zu seiner Ausgabe der Schriften von J.M.R. Lenz aus dem Jahre 1828, die 1848 unter dem Titel „Goethe und seine Zeit“ neu herausgegeben wurde, unternimmt Ludwig Tieck den Versuch, die Bedeutung Goethes und seines Werks für die deutsche Literatur und Kultur zu bestimmen. Formal ist diese umfänglichste essayistische Arbeit Tiecks dabei als Gespräch einer Gruppe von Freunden angelegt und greift auf unterschiedliche literarische Formen zurück. Der vorliegende Beitrag legt dar, dass in „Goethe und seine Zeit“ die frühromantische Forderung nach einer anti-normativen und liberal-pluralistischen Dichtungskritik sowohl explizit thematisiert als auch in der formalen Anlage des Essays selbst umgesetzt wird. Der Text wird somit als Exempel einer selbst dichtenden Dichtungskritik verstanden und darüber hinaus in den Kontext von Tiecks allgemeineren Überlegungen zu Literatur und Literaturkritik gerückt.

In the introductory essay to his edition of the works of J.M.R. Lenz from 1828 – a text published again in 1848 under the title ‘Goethe und seine Zeit’ – Ludwig Tieck explores the significance of Goethe and his work for German literature and culture. This essay, the most extensive in Tieck’s œuvre, consists of conversations among a group of friends and employs various literary forms. The present article analyses the extent to which the early-romantic demand for an anti-normative and liberal-pluralistic mode of literary comment is explicitly expressed in the essay and also imminently reflected in its formal structure. Understood in this light, Tieck’s text exemplifies an intentionally poetic form of literary criticism. It is then evaluated within the larger context of Tieck’s general reflections on literature and criticism.

Il saggio analizza la fitta intertestualità che lega il Faust 67 di Tommaso Landolfi all’archetipica versione di Goethe. A lungo negata dalla critica, la relazione tra le due opere, di tipo ironico e parodico, è stata riconosciuta solo in tempi recenti. In particolare, verrà analizzato il motivo del dongiovannismo del protagonista, quale indice di una paradossale fedeltà del Faust 67 al suo anti-modello. L’opera in tal modo risulterà non solo una perfetta espressione della poetica autoriflessiva e autofinzionale landolfiana, ma anche una delle grandi rielaborazioni novecentesche del classico di Goethe.

The current article draws on several pages taken from a chapter of the English translation of my book “Ariosto e l’ironia della finzione. La ricezione letteraria e figurativa dell’Orlando furioso in Francia, Germania e Italia” (Venezia, Marsilio, 2014), which is currently in preparation.

Die Forschung hat einige Schwierigkeiten damit, zu erklären, wie Schlegels ‘Ironie’-Konzept, das dieser vornehmlich in Literatur verwirklicht sah, realiter in Texten figuriert. Die gängigste, wenn auch immer wieder kontrovers diskutierte Übersetzung ist ‘Illusionsbruch’. Ich schlage eine breitere Definition vor und untersuche dazu die Analogien in der logischen Form von Wolfgang Isers ‘Komik’-Konzept, Schlegels ‘Ironie’-Konzept und Tiecks Stück ‘Leben und Tod des kleinen Rotkäppchens’. Tiecks Stück hat bislang, vor allem ob seiner schwierigen Klassifizierbarkeit, wenig Resonanz in der Forschung gefunden. Die von mir erhellte Analogie erlaubt es, bedeutende Mechanismen der romantischen komischen Literatur unter dem Paradigma der Ironie zu diskutieren und liefert damit einen gangbaren Ansatz, um die Vorliebe der Romantik für und das Spezielle der romantischen Komödie zu erklären

Miguel Alberti, “El Monólogo de Novalis. Texto, comentario y consideraciones sobre sus vínculos con la “ironía” romántica”.

Renata Finelli, “La fotografía como índex de la Revolución rusa (1921-1929)”.

Cecilia J. Perczyk, “La Erinias en el Orestes de Eurípides”.

Comentarios bibliográficos:

Hans Blumenberg. Fuentes, corrientes, icebergs
Franco Liberati

Luis Juan Guerrero. Qué es la belleza y otros ensayos
Yanina Benítez Ocampo

Il saggio su Studi Germanici, 17, 2020: https://www.studigermanici.it/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/1662-1023-3-PB.pdf

Il saggio interpreta la Rede über die Mythologie di Friedrich Schlegel come consapevole approssimazione a un ideale ritenuto impossibile: l’identità di antico e moderno nella concezione della letteratura moderna come mitologia. Tale approssimazione risulterà fondata sui termini della filosofia trascendentale di Schlegel, e in particolare sulla dialettica dell’ironia. In questa chiave, la teoria neomitologica della Rede apparirà limitata e relativizzata dal contesto del più ampio saggio in cui è inserita, il Gespräch über die Poesie; risulterà inoltre distante da altre formulazioni, tematicamente affini, prodotte dalla poetica e dalla filosofia tedesca del tardo Settecento, a cui è invece spesso accomunata.

Dialetheism is the view that some contradictions are not per se false but actually true. Therefore, dialetheists argue that the law of non-contradiction does not hold universally. It is a view held dearly by many dialetheists that Hegel was their modern ancestor. This paper argues that the question of the truth of contradictions is the essential point of departure between Hegel and dialetheism, and that Friedrich Schlegel and the early Romantics were the original precursors of dialetheism, anticipating many arguments that doubted the universal validity of the law of non-contradiction. Ultimately, the paper reads Hegel’s critique of romantic irony as a critique of dialetheism.

This essay investigates the prospect of Romantic Irony’s potential resurgence in contemporary poetics and discusses its relevance and likeness with metamodernism.

The internet has by now not only seeped into, but fully permeated, the process of literary production and distribution. The effect of this has been the birth of a new kind of poetic discourse which can broadly be called metamodernism, The New Sincerity or Alt-lit. This movement is characterized by its self-reflexive metacommentary, fragmentary nature and an oscillation between of irony and sincerity. Vermeulen and Akker, among others, have hinted at metamodernism’s relation to Romanticism, but research into the specifics of its tendency towards Romantic Irony is scarce. By viewing the writings of Steve Roggenbuck (a central figure in the new poetic movement), alongside the philosophy of Friedrich Schlegel, I propose a comparative framework for discussion of sincerity, irony and the instrumentalization of contemporary metamodernist writing.

I demonstrate that Roggenbuck’s writing displays narratological, tropological and thematic tendencies commonly associated with both Romantic Irony and metamodernism. Apart from broader structural comparison, I attempt a comparative analysis between Roggenbuck’s poetry (2010-2015) and Thomas Carlyle’s novel “Sartor Resartus” (1833-1834) in order to provide a visualisation of the rhetorical and narratological strategies of Romantic Irony. I aim to frame Romantic Irony as a sensibility, or mode of discourse - rather than a strict system of thought - which may still be at work today. In extension, the sensibilities of Romantic Irony may shed further light into the philosophical potential of the seemingly incomprehensible and contradictory tendencies of metamodernism. By ironicizing its poetic form, literary ambition and desire for sincerity in a post-postmodern era, Roggenbuck’s poetry celebrates ambiguity and literary failure, ultimately framing irony as a constructive and potentially democratic operation.