Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Abbreviations
- 1 Introduction
- 2 The possibilities of irony in courtly literature
- 3 Irony and chivalry
- 4 Irony and love
- 5 Irony and narrative technique
- 6 Verbal irony
- 7 Irony of the narrator
- 8 Dramatic irony
- 9 The irony of values
- 10 Structural irony
- 11 The reasons for irony in the medieval romance
- Bibliography
- Index of passages discussed
- General index
11 - The reasons for irony in the medieval romance
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 August 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Abbreviations
- 1 Introduction
- 2 The possibilities of irony in courtly literature
- 3 Irony and chivalry
- 4 Irony and love
- 5 Irony and narrative technique
- 6 Verbal irony
- 7 Irony of the narrator
- 8 Dramatic irony
- 9 The irony of values
- 10 Structural irony
- 11 The reasons for irony in the medieval romance
- Bibliography
- Index of passages discussed
- General index
Summary
It is time now to draw the threads of our argument together and look at the considerations which made irony possible in the medieval romance as well as the reasons leading courtly poets to make use of it. I shall be concerned only with collective, historical reasons applicable to courtly literature or the genre of the romance at large, not with individual reasons which, in addition, may have driven any poet to make use of irony.
The poet's status
We may start by giving pride of place to the fact that the courtly poet can often be regarded as something of an outsider, standing aloof from the court and its values and viewing them from a potentially critical distance. What is true of Walther (his uncertain social position forced him into this rôle, which encouraged a critical, often ironic attitude towards the world of the court) is not without relevance to his colleagues in the narrative genre of the romance. This is particularly true of the French romances, most of whose authors are not knights, but clerics, perhaps active at courts in various functions, but not so thoroughly of the court as would have been the case if they had been knights.
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- Chapter
- Information
- Irony in the Medieval Romance , pp. 359 - 393Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1979