In this study I argue that Victorian writers Thomas Carlyle, George Eliot, and Walter Pater participated more fully than has previously been acknowledged in the aesthetic and ethical concerns surrounding romantic irony as it was articulated by philosophers such as Friedrich Schlegel and Søren Kierkegaard. In opposition to a twentieth-century critical trend that has tended to applaud German romanticism for its progressive insights, and dismiss nineteenth-century British texts as regressive, I show how three key Victorian texts recognized, articulated, and sought to negotiate the phenomenon of irony. More specifically, I show that the ironic features of Carlyles The French Revolution: A History, Eliots Romola, and Paters Denys LAuxerrois are closely connected to the authors concerns with, and attempts to formulate, a model of ethics in the face of the metaphysical indeterminacy that is a central feature of romantic irony.
In Carlyles The French Revolution: A History, I show how the narrator maps a gulf between language and referent onto a gulf between the social classes represented by the Sansculottes and the Girondin. This association of semiotic and political fragmentation suggests that for Carlyle, irony remained an external phenomenon, which may help explain why he sought an external solution to the chaos of the revolution by invoking the military force of the hero. In Eliots Romola, I suggest that the sudden appearance of allegory toward the end of this otherwise realist novel serves as an indirect presentation of the heroines ethical transcendence. The temporal nature of allegory reflects the novels formulation of ethics as a process of forming character through repeated habits of action and thoughta process that recalls Kierkegaards association of repetition with ethical choice. In Paters Denys LAuxerrois I show that the ability of art objects to conjure up living presence is presented ironically through a series of framing devices. This irony is closely connected to Paters formulation of ethics as a matter of character-building through aesthetic exposure, but like Eliot and Kierkegaard, Pater presents this ethical model in an indirect aesthetic mode. This study helps deepen critical understanding of irony, ethics, and representation in Victorian texts.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:PITT/oai:PITTETD:etd-08032007-120918 |
| Date | 20 September 2007 |
| Creators | Cook, Amy L. |
| Contributors | Laura Callanan, Philip E. Smith, Eric O. Clarke, Troy Boone |
| Publisher | University of Pittsburgh |
| Source Sets | University of Pittsburgh |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.library.pitt.edu/ETD/available/etd-08032007-120918/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University of Pittsburgh or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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