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Project

Disruption and Suspicion: Irony and the modern Dutch Novel

Unmasking and Assumption. A study of irony and the Dutch novel 

My dissertation concerns a study of interpretation from the irony of four dutch novels. It consists of two parts: part 1 is a theoretical one and part 2 is the utilization at the interpretation. Central in part 1 is the study of the notion of irony. Linguistically my study has been based on the Coöperative Principle (CP) of the linguist and philosopher Paul Grice. His hypothesis assumes that every human being wants te be understood optimally.But, according to Grice, irony do not satisfy to his hypothesis. Sperber and Wilson highlight Grice's hypothesis with their principle of relevance: every intentional act is inspired by relevance. Irony too is inspired by relevance because irony is an intentional speech act. Further I will honoured the elusiveness and multicolourness of the phenomenon irony and so I found the following definition of verbal irony: Irony is the linguistic phenomenon at which the hearer experiences a moment of critical distance because of seeming contextual absurdities. Therefore the hearer chooses a specific interpretation in stead of a normal valid one. 

Irony is a philosophical notion too. The Ameraican pragmatic philosopher Richard Rorty places the irony central in his view on the human condition. He considers the ironist as someone who has radical and permanent doubts about his final vocabulary with which he describes his own position in the world. This pragmatic-philosophical view on irony enlarges the found pragmatic-linguistic definition and relates irony with the views of the characters and the narrator.     

For an obvious interpretation of the irony it is necessary to consider the posititon of the narrator. Therefore I pay attention to the narratology. Further I discuss some studies about the receptional approach, because the reader is after all the interpreter. At last I speak shortly about modernism and postmodernism, because I want to place the chosen novels in a whole.

In part 2 I use the obtained insights at the interpretation of four novels: Max Havelaar (1860), Multatuli, Bint (1934), Bordewijk, Mystiek lichaam (1986), Frans Kellendonk, Het Boek Van Violet En Dood (1996) van Gerard Reve. I pay much attention to the reception of each novel, by which one can see how the novel had been read in the past.

Date:30 Jun 2015 →  25 Apr 2018
Keywords:Irony and literature
Disciplines:Language studies, Literary studies, Theory and methodology of language studies, Theory and methodology of linguistics, Theory and methodology of literary studies, Other languages and literary studies
Project type:PhD project