Ways of seeing irony: some of the theories applied to Muriel Spark's writings.

Ruby Rennie

In an attempt to understand and explain how irony works in literature, critics have used a range of expressions, from “stable irony” to the “interpretive community”. How far do these different theories aid an understanding of what we recognise as irony? In this paper I shall take examples of irony in some selected texts and consider them in relation to some of the theories that have been proposed. The discussion will centre on whether we can in fact say that there is something that is recognisable as irony in literary texts.