Irony and Earnestness in Eighteenth-Century Literature
Dimensions of Satire and Solemnity

Shane Herron demonstrates how eighteenth-century irony was used not only in derision but also to clarify and sharpen emotional investments.

Shane Herron (Author)

9781108834438, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 27 January 2022

250 pages
23.5 x 15.9 x 2 cm, 0.51 kg

'The book is well structured, well argued, and well written … Recommended.' J. T. Lynch, Choice

The conventional literary history of the eighteenth century holds that upstart novelists and other intensely serious writers worked against the conservative and ironic sensibility of an earlier generation of satirists. However, many of these ostensibly earnest writers were exceptional satirists in their own right, employing the same ruses, tricks, and deceptions throughout their work. The novels of such canonical figures as Behn and Defoe, for example, passed themselves off as real documents, just as an earlier generation of hack writers combined the serious and the absurd. Re-examining this nexus between the ludicrous and the solemn, Shane Herron argues that intense earnestness was itself a central component of the ironic sensibility of the great age of literary satire and of Swift's work in particular. The sensationalism and confessionalism of earnestness were frequently employed tendentiously, while ironic and satirical literature often incorporated genuine moments of earnestness to advance writerly aims.

1. Swift and the hacks: A relationship reconsidered
2. 'By One of the Fair Sex': Irony, sovereignty, and sexual difference
3. Keeping up appearances: Satire between preservation and reformation
4. Dark humor and moral sense theory: Or, how Swift learned to stop worrying and love evil
5. Gratitude for the ordinary: Defoe's irony.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers [DSK], Literary studies: c 1500 to c 1800 [DSBD], Literary theory [DSA]