Four Walls

Irony/wit and Romance in Jane Austen Irony According to The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory, “Most forms of irony involve the perception or awareness of a discrepancy or incongruity between words and their meaning, or between actions and their results, or between appearance and reality. The two basic kinds of irony are verbal irony and irony of the situation (for the latter one may substitute, on occasions, the irony of behavior). At its simplest, verbal irony involves saying what one does not mean. Johnson defined it as a mode of speech in which meaning is contrary to the words.

Critical overview in Pride and Prejudice Study Guide Examples of Irony in Pride and Prejudice Verbal Irony 1. “It is a truth universally acknowledged….wife” (Austen 3) - from Chapter 1. 2. Elizabeth makes the following comment about Mr. Darcy to Mr. Wickham in Chapter 41: “In essentials, I believe, he is very much what he ever was” (Austen 192).  3. In Chapter 4, Mrs. Hurst and Caroline Bingley are portrayed in the following manner: “They were rather handsome, had been educated in one of the…entitled to think well of themselves, and meanly to others” (Austen 12, 13). The irony resides in the fact that the readers soon realize that the sisters are proud, snobbish and are unrefined since they do not always resort to social propriety and show an immense degree of malice toward the Bennets.

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens Book Preview I t was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way—in short, the period was so far like the present peri- od, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only. More

Pride and Prejudice Jane Auston 's novel Book   Preview Reading Jane Austen as a Moral Philosopher Thomas Rodham keenly observes Jane Austen’s exacting ethical expertise.  Jane Austen (1775-1817) wrote delicious romantic comedies about middle-class girls looking for good husbands among the landed gentry of Regency England. But if that were all there was to it we wouldn’t make her any more seriously now than the genre hack published by Mills and Boon. What’s so special about her novels that we are still reading them today? It’s not just their literary quality. Austen was also a brilliant moral philosopher who analysed and taught a virtue ethics for middle-class life that is surprisingly contemporary. Appreciating this can help us understand why she wrote the way she did, and how and why we should read her today. Austen’s Literary Situation Austen is justly celebrated as a literary icon both for her genius and for her role in inventing the modern novel. Her first

JANE AUSTON'S MORAL VISIONS Jane Austen (1775-1817) wrote delicious romantic comedies about middle-class girls looking for good husbands among the landed gentry of Regency England. But if that were all there was to it we wouldn’t take her any more seriously now than the genre hacks published by Mills and Boon. What’s so special about her novels that we are still reading them today? It’s not just their literary quality. Austen was also a brilliant moral philosopher who analysed and taught a virtue ethics for middle-class life that is surprisingly contemporary. Appreciating this can help us understand why she wrote the way she did, and how and why we should read her today. MORE