Realising Irony's Post/Colonial Promise: Global Sense and Local Meaning in Things Fall Apart and 'Ruins of a Great House'

Authors

Mac Fenwick

Abstract

The only thing that can be said for certain about irony is that it is the trope par excellence of uncertainty. This is why I have chosen to begin this study not with a statement about irony, but with a couple of ironic moments. Still, the term is so protean that even to claim that the above examples are instances of irony will undoubtedly be contentious. The purpose of this study, then, is not to generate a new theory of irony (the world has no need of that) but to realise what I will be calling the 'promise' of irony within post/colonial' texts. I use the word 'promise' in both of its senses: to indicate the potential of irony (a potential that is best realised, perhaps, in never being fulfilled), and as an oath or compact made between irony's co-conspirators: the reader and the text.

Recommended Citation

Fenwick, Mac, Realising Irony's Post/Colonial Promise: Global Sense and Local Meaning in Things Fall Apart and 'Ruins of a Great House', Kunapipi, 28(1), 2006.
Available at:https://ro.uow.edu.au/kunapipi/vol28/iss1/3