>...wish we had a link to this prof's arguments.
Professor emeritus of English, Paul Fussell discusses the use (and non-use) of irony in the words of songs on the best-selling album of pop singer Alanis Morissette in an article in The Washington Post. The album itself is called "Ironic" but Fussell found very little irony in the lyrics. Fussell had never heard the record but liked some of the lyrics after they were read to him. "Those are some pretty nice words," he said. "It's good for what it is. It's sardonic, and very little pop culture is." As for irony, Fussell found some situational irony in the songs but no rhetorical irony. "Rhetorical irony requires immense intellectual self-respect," he explained, "you have to be more or less brilliant to get rhetorical irony."
notes:
this is from the "Penn Arts & Sciences" newsletter. I suppose more than one prof may have tackled this thorny issue, but this should be in the Washington Post archives.
"more or less brilliant"... heh.
