Les rongeurs ironiques – dimensions rhétorico-pragmatiques du discours ironique dans l’univers des rats fabuleux de La Fontaine

• Authors: Eszter Valyon
• Languages of publication: PL

Abstracts

PL

The present paper discusses the rhetorical / pragmatic dimensions and levels of the verbal irony through the example of La Fontaine’s Rat-fables. Verbal irony performs a pragmatic function, making use of a potential contrast between expected and experienced events. This makes verbal irony generally funnier, more criticizing, more expressive of a difference between expected and ensuing events and more protective of the speaker than literal remarks. This paper also proposes a study of verbal irony, as purely pragmatic phenomenon, in order to provide a plausible review how irony is distinguished from non-irony, how the traditional pragmatic theory, the echoic interpretation theory, the pretence theory and the recent implicit display theory could be applied for checking and analysing the nature and function of the verbal irony in the fables. Furthermore, this set of adequate theories indicates the validity of 17th century fables, and contributes a detailed analysis of the allegoric ‘ironicalness’.

Keywords

PL

• Publisher: Uniwersytet Jagielloński
• Journal: Romanica Cracoviensia
• Year: 2009
• Volume: 9
• Issue: 1

Dates

published

2009

online

2009-10-06

Contributors

author

Eszter Valyon