《傲慢与偏见》中的反讽语言

毕业论文
题目：《傲慢与偏见》中的反讽语言Title:On the Use of Irony in Pride and Prejudice
2009 年5 月13 日
Acknowledgements
First and foremost, my appreciation goes to my affectionate parents, and the rest of my family. Throughout the development of this paper, they have been there always giving me continuous support, encouragement and understanding. Their love and support encourage me to pursue progress all the time.
I would also like to extend my sincere thanks to all teachers who gave me lectures during the past three academic years. I have benefited so much not only from their courses and lectures but also from their constant encouragement.
Finally, my deepest gratitude and respect go to my supervisor, Zeng Qingqiang. It is for his constant encouragement, critical instructions, his great care and precious advice and suggestions that this paper appears in the present form.
Abstract
Nowadays, Irony is not only a figure of speech, but also a form of literature art. It could reveal the theme of the book deeply while bring people merriment. Pride and Prejudice is a very popular novel written by Jane Austen and has been read widely all over the world. In this novel, Jane Austen’s usage of irony allows the reader to fully comprehend the situation and certain feeling of the characters, story plot and the theme of the novel. Irony plays an important role in this novel, because irony runs through the whole novel, and is a good way of communication. Words or sentences in irony can reveal characters’personalities and characters’ideas. In this paper, most irony cases in the novel are taken as typical examples to analyze how it is used as a dramatic device in the novel to further the plot, help the revelation of character, reflect writing and speaking style and suggest intimate feelings and reveal the theme.
Key words：irony; Pride and Prejudice; characters; plot; theme.
摘要
如今，反讽一词不再仅仅是一种修辞方法，而且还是一种文学艺术形式。

它不仅能给读者带来欢笑，同时还能够深刻的揭示出文章的主题及作者的思想。

《傲慢与偏见》是一部由简·奥斯汀创作的深受世界读者喜欢的小说。

在这部小说中，作者简·奥斯汀的反讽手法的运用使得读者能够深刻完整的理解小说中人物的处境和特定情感、故事的情节以及主题。

反讽在这部小说中起着至关重要的作用，因为当小说被创作完成时，它贯穿了整个作品，并且是一种比起通过简单的辞藻来描写来的更完美的方式。

具有讽刺意味的单词或句子可以展示人物的个性，并将角色的想法传递给别人。

在本文中，列举了许多小说中的反讽典型实例来分析作者是怎样将它作为一种戏剧手法来推动情节发展，深化人物角色，反映写作和语言风格，暗示人物间亲密情感以及揭示主题。

关键词: 反讽；《傲慢与偏见》；性格；情节；主题
Contents Introduction (1)
I. The brief introduction to irony (4)
1.1 Definitions of irony (4)
1.2 Types of irony (4)
II. Jane Austen and her works (7)
2.1 Lifelong career of Jane Austen (7)
2.2 Works of Jane Austen (8)
2.3 Language characteristic of Jane Austen (10)
III. Irony in Pride and Prejudice (10)
3.1 Use of irony (10)
3.2 Effect of irony (14)
3.3 Characteristics of Jane Austen’s irony (15)
Conclusion (18)
Bibliography (19)
Introduction
Irony is the art of expressing two meanings simultaneously; the obvious surface meaning which the majority regard as the only meaning and a deeper and profound meaning which lies behind the obvious.
Pride and Prejudice, for instance, is steeped in irony. To put it in other words, it is an artistic blend of ironic and dramatic designs. Almost everything in this novel is related to the context or to the style, points to an ironic contrast between 'appearance' and 'reality'. It is the complex handling of "First Impressions" that lends to Austen's irony.
Pride and Prejudice is one of Jane Austen's masterpieces. It is universally read from its magnificent opening sentence to the end and we can feel its author is great and the novel is well constructed. In the most striking place, the use of comic irony makes us feel the comedy and satire of the whole novel and also the most shining people Elizabeth Bennet who gains the most admiration in print. From it, we can also appreciate the love and marriage between the ladies and gentlemen of the landed gentry; the complicated Pride and Prejudice between the hero and heroine which make the novel more vivid and believable and the characters more truthful than ever; the author's mastery of language and the great achievement of the novel.
I.The brief introduction to irony
1.1Definitions of irony
It is difficult to define the word of “irony” whic h could be understood in various ways. The expansion of its research area may be the direct cause of the diversity of the definition of irony. The following are some definitions of irony from experts and dictionaries.
1.1.1 Experts’ opinions on irony
The definition of irony, in the simplest form, is the difference between what someone would reasonably expect to happen and what actually does. Meaning that something happens that you would not ever reasonably expect to happen, that is considered irony. However, different experts obtained their own points of view.
Henry Watson Fowler who is the English lexicographer and philologist, in The King's English, says “any defin ition of irony—though hundreds might be given, and very few of them would be accepted—must include this, that the surface meaning and the underlying meaning of what is said are not the same.” The word 'ironic' is sometimes used as a synonym for incongruous or coincidental in situations where there is no “double audience,” and no contradiction between the ostensible and true meaning of the words.
The American Heritage Dictionary recognizes a secondary meaning for irony: “incongruity between what might be expected and what actually occurs.” This sense, however, is not synonymous with "incongruous" but merely a definition of dramatic or situational irony. The American Heritage Dictionary’s usage panel found it unacceptable to use the word ironic to describe mere unfortunate coincidences or surprising disappointments that “suggest no particular lessons about human vanity or folly.”
1.1.2 Dictionary definitions of irony
1) Expression of one’s meaning by saying the direct opposite of one’s thoughts in order to be emphatic, amusing, sarcastic, etc. (1)
Oxford Advanced Learner’s English-Chinese Dictionary
2) Use of words which are clearly opposite to one’s meaning, usually either in order to be amusing or to show annoyance (e.g. by saying ‘What charming behaviour’ when someone has been rude.) (2)
Longman Dictionary of English Language &Culture (English-Chinese)
3) Irony is a literary technique that achieves the effect of saying one thing and meaning another through the use of humor or mild sarcasm. (3)
W ebster’s New World Encyclopedia
4) The use of words to express something other than and especially the opposite of the literal meaning. [(3) p8]
Webster English Dictionary
5) Irony is a figure of speech that achieves emphasis by saying the opposite of what is meant, the intended meaning of the words being the opposite of their usual sense. This form of irony is called verbal irony, and differs from the stylistic device of dramatic irony. (4)
English Rhetorical Options
6) Definition of irony from Grolier International Dictionary:
a). An expression or utterance marked by such a deliberate contrast between apparent and intended meaning, for humorous or rhetorical effect.
b). Incongruity between what might be expected and what occurs. [(3) p9]
The above definitions, although explained by different experts from different angles, roughly display the nature of irony from both the form and function. Among these definitions, the basic meaning of irony could be found as “saying one thing but meaning another.” The best description of irony, say, the Grolier International Dictionary, takes both the form and function of irony into consideration and gives us a better picture. However, all of these definitions have some shortcomings. First, none of them provides an effective way to identify irony
from non-irony. Second, they basically regard irony as a trope or a figure of speech whose literal and connotative meanings are mutually opposed to each other. This traditional understanding has been under challenges by modern research. Although the definition of irony is still under working, however the types of irony are clearer than its definitions.
1.2 Types of irony
The classification of irony is presented in different ways by those who work on it. Booth identifies quite a number of types: tragic irony, comic irony, stable irony, unstable irony, dramatic irony, situational irony, verbal irony, rhetorical irony so on and so forth. Kreuz and Roberts distinguish four types of irony: Socratic irony, dramatic irony, irony of fate and verbal irony. [(3) p18]
In general, irony involves a contradiction between appearance and reality. Irony results where there is a difference in point of view between a character and the narrator or reader. Traditionally, there are three major types of irony: verbal, dramatic and situational.
1. 2.1 Verbal irony, including sarcasm
Verbal irony is a disparity of expression and intention. When a speaker says one thing but means the opposite, or when a literal meaning is contrary to its intended effect.
For example：
Ironic similes are a form of verbal irony where a speaker does intend to communicate the opposite of what they mean. For instance, the following explicit similes have the form of a statement that means P but which conveys the meaning not P:
·as hard as putty
·as funny as cancer
·as clear as mud
·as pleasant as a root canal treatment
The irony is recognizable in each case only by using stereotypical knowledge of the source concepts (e.g., mud, root-canal surgery) to detect an incongruity.
.Verbal irony is distinguished from situational irony and dramatic irony in that it is produced intentionally by speakers, in other words, it refers to spoken words only. For instance, if a speaker exclaims, “I’m not upset!” but reveals an upset emotional state through her voice while truly trying to claim she's not upset, it would not be verbal irony by virtue of its verbal manifestation (it would, however, be situational irony). But if the same speaker said the same words and intended to communicate that she was upset by claiming she was not, the utterance would be verbal irony. This distinction gets at an important aspect of verbal irony: speakers communicate implied propositions that are intentionally contradictory to the propositions contained in the words themselves. There are examples of verbal irony that do not rely on saying the opposite of what one means, and there are cases where all the traditional criteria of irony exist and the utterance is not ironic.
1.2.2 Dramatic irony, including tragic irony
Dramatic irony is a disparity of expression and awareness: when words and actions possess significance that the listener or audience understands, but the speaker or character does not. Dramatic irony has three stages - installation, exploitation and resolution (sometimes called preparation, suspension and resolution) - producing dramatic conflict is produced in what one character relies or appears to rely upon a fact, the contrary of which is known by observers (especially the audience; sometimes to other characters within the drama) to be true.
For example:
·In City Lights, the audience knows that Charlie Chaplin's character is not a millionaire, but the blind flower girl (Virginia Cherill) is unaware.
·In North by Northwest), the audience knows that Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant) is not Kaplan; Vandamm (James Mason) and his acolytes do not. The audience also knows that Kaplan is a fictitious agent invented by the CIA; Roger and Vandamm do not.
·In Othello, the reader knows that Desdemona has been faithful to Othello, but Othello doesn't. The reader also knows that Iago is pulling the strings, a fact hidden from Othello, Desdemona, Cassio and Roderigo.
·In Pygmalion,, the reader knows that Eliza is a woman of the street; Higgins's family does not.
Tragic irony is a special category of dramatic irony. In tragic irony, the words and actions of the characters belie the real situation, which the spectators fully realize. Ancient Greek drama was especially characterized by tragic irony because the audiences were so familiar with the legends that most of the plays dramatized. Sophocles' Oedipus the King provides a classic example of tragic irony at its fullest. Irony threatens authoritative models of discourse by "removing the semantic security of ‘one signifier: one signified’";(2) irony has some of its foundation in the onlooker’s perception of paradox which arises from insoluble problems.
For example:
In the William Shakespeare play Romeo and Juliet, when Romeo finds Juliet in a drugged death-like sleep, he assumes her to be dead and kills himself. Upon awakening to find her dead lover beside her, Juliet kills herself with his dagger.
1.2.3 Situational irony including comic irony (irony of fate)
Situational irony is the disparity of intention and result: when the result of an action is contrary to the desired or expected effect. It defies logical cause/ effect relationships and justifiable expectations. For example, if a greedy millionaire were to buy a lottery ticket and win additional millions, the irony would be situational because such a circumstance cannot be explained logically. Such a circumstance seems “unfair”. This sense of being “unfair” or “unfortunate” is a trademark of situational irony. Because people cannot explain the unfairness, it causes them to question whether or not the word makes sense.
Likewise, cosmic irony (the so-called irony of fate) is disparity between human desires and the harsh realities of the outside world (or the whims of the gods). Saying
in another way “irony of fate” stems from the notion that the gods (or th e Fates) are amusing themselves by toying with the minds of mortals with deliberate ironic intent. Closely connected with situational irony, it arises from sharp contrasts between reality and human ideals, or between human intentions and actual results. It goes beyond being unfair and is morally tragic. Such irony is often so severe that it causes people to question God and see the universe as hostile. For example, if an honest, hardworking and generous person buys a lottery ticket and wins ten million dollars, only to die in an auto crash two days later; the irony would reach tragic proportions. When situational irony reaches this scale, it is often called comic irony or irony of fate. Such irony typically suggests that people are pawns to malicious forces.
Ⅱ.Jane Austen and her works
Irony is the very soul of Jane Austen’s novels and Pride and Prejudice is steeped in verbal irony, dramatic irony and irony of situation.Irony is the contrast between appearance and reality.
As one examines Pride and Prejudice,one is struck with the fact of the ironic significance that pride leads to prejudice and prejudice invites pride and both have their corresponding virtues bound up within them. Each has its virtues and each has its defects. They are contradictory and the supreme irony is that intricacy, which is much deeper, carries with it grave dangers unknown to simplicity. This type of thematic irony run s through Jane Austen’s entire novel.In this way, before analyze the use of irony in Pride and Prejudice, I would like to make a brief introduction of the witty writer--Jane Austen. Her family background (class origin), living environment and home-education brought up her writing skill and language characteristic.
2.1 Lifelong career of Jane Austen
Jane Austen was born in a family of the rural professional middle class on 16 December 1775, in the parish of Steventon, a small village in the southern English
county of Hampshire, where her father, Rev. George Austen (1731-1805), was a rector and a scholar with a good library. Her mother, Cassandra Leigh Austen (1739-1827), was from a higher social rank, minor gentry related distantly to titled people, but once she married the Reverend Austen in 1764 she entered wholeheartedly and with humor into the domestic life and responsibilities of managing a household economy by no means luxurious, bearing eight children--six sons and two daughters. Jane Austen was the second daughter and seventh child in a family of eight. In this setting the Austens mingled easily with other gentrified professionals and with local gentry families.
Jane was brought up in an intelligent but restricted environment. She received her education—scanty enough, by modern standards—at home.Besides the usual elementary subjects, she learned French and some Italian, sang a little, and became an expert needle-woman. Trough a wide reading of books available in her father’s library, she acquired a thorough knowledge of eighteenth-century English literature, and within that period she seems to have cared most for the novels of Richardson and Miss Burney, and the poems of W. Cowper and Crabbe. She also admired the moral philosophy of Dr. Johnson, and later was delighted with both the poetry and prose of Scott.
She lived a quiet, retired and, in public terms, uneventful life. In the first twenty-five years of her life she spent at Steventon; in 1801 on her father’s unexpected retirement, she moved with her family to Bath, then a great center of fashion; after the death of her father in 1805, she lived with her mother and her elder sister, first at Southampton and then at Chawton; finally she took lodgings at Winchester to be near a doctor, and there she died on July 1817, and was buried in the cathedral. And her closest companion was her elder sister cassabdra, who, like her, never married. Apart from a few visits to friends in London and elsewhere, and the vague report of a love affair with a gentleman who died suddenly, there is little else to chronicle in this quiet and uneventful life. (5)
2.2 Works of Jane Austen
Jane Austen was mostly tutored at home, and irregularly at school, but she received a broader education than many women of her time. She started as a child to write novels for her family amusement. Her parents were avid readers; Austen's own favorite poet was Cowper. Her earliest-known writings date from about 1787. Very shy about her writing, she wrote on small pieces of paper that she slipped under the desk plotter if anyone came into the room. In her letters she observed the daily life of her family and friends in an intimate and gossipy manner: "James danced with Alethea, and cut up the turkey last night with great perseverance. You say nothing of the silk stockings; I flatter myself, therefore, that Charles has not purchased any, as I cannot very well afford to pay for them; all my money is spent in buying white gloves and pink persian." (Austen in a letter to her sister Cassandra in 1796)
Austen's father supported his daughter's writing aspirations and tried to help her get a publisher.
In her lifelong career, Jane Austen wrote altogether six complete novels, which can be divided into two distinct periods. She wrote her first three novels in the period of 1795 to 1798, but it took her more than 15 years to find a publisher. Her first novel, sense and sensibility (1811), tells a story about two sisters and their love affairs; Pride and Prejudice(1813), the most popular of her novels, deals with the five Bennet sisters and their search for suitable husbands; and Northanger Abbey (1818) satirizes those popular Gothic romances of the late 18th after the publication of Sense and Sensibility. All her last three novels deal with the romantic entanglements of their strongly characterized heroines. Mansfield Park (1814)presents the antithesis of worldliness and unworldliness; Emma (1815) gives the thought over self-deceptive vanity; and Persuasion (1818)contrasts the true love with the prudential calculations. Several incomplete works were published long after Austen’s death. There include the Watsons (1923), Fragment of a Novel (1925), and Plan of a Novel (1926).
Generally speaking, Jane Austen was a writer of the 18th century, though she lived mainly in the nineteenth century. She holds the ideals of the landlord class in politics, religion and moral principles; and her works a discriminated and serious criticism of
life, and to expose the follies and illusions of mankind. She shows contemptuous feelings towards snobbery, stupidity, worldliness and vulgarity through subtle satire and irony. And in style, she is a neoclassicism advocator, upholding those traditional ideas of order, reason, proportion and gracefulness in novel writing.
2.3Language characteristic of Jane Austen
The most remarkable characteristic of Jane Austen as a novelist is her recognition of the limits of her knowledge of life and her determination never to go beyond these limits in her books. She describes her own class, in the part of the country with which she was acquainted; and both the types of character and the events are such as she knew from first-hand observation and experience. But to the portrayal of these she brought an extraordinary power of delicate and subtle delineation, a gift of lively dialogue, and a peculiar detachment. She abounds in humor, but it is always quiet and controlled; and though one feels that she sees through the affectations and petty hypocrisies of her circle, she seldom becomes openly satirical. The fineness of her workmanship, unexcelled in the English novel, makes possible the discrimination of characters who have outwardly little or nothing to distinguish them; and the analysis of the states of mind and feeling of ordinary people is done so faithfully and vividly as to compensate for the lack of passion and adventure. She herself speaks of the "little bit (two inches wide) of ivory on which I work," and, in contrast with the broad canvases of Fielding or Scott, her stories have the exquisiteness of a fine miniature. (6)
In displaying irony in her work, Jane Austen uses Mr. Bennet, the apathetic father of the Bennet sisters, and the unhappily married husband of Mrs. Bennet, as a satiric and ironic character. Through irony, Mr. Bennet provides comic relief from the regular order of things in the Bennet household, mainly at the expense of his wife. Within the book Pride and Prejudice, there are three prime examples of Jane Austen’s use of irony with Mr. Bennet, and these examples are his marriage to Mrs. Bennet, his
indulgence of Lydia and the results thereof, and his failure to provide a secure financial future for his daughters.
Ⅲ. Irony in Pride and Prejudice
3.1. Use of irony
3.1.1 Verbal irony
The novel is full of verbal irony, especially coming from Elizabeth and Mr. Bennet. Verbal irony is saying one thing, but meaning the complete opposite. In Mr. Bennet younger years, Mr. Bennet proposed to and married Mrs. Bennet. However, as Jane Austen puts i t, “Her father captivated by youth and beauty, and that appearance of good humor, which youth and beauty generally give, had married a woman whose weak understanding and illiberal mind, had very early in their marriage put an end to all real affection for her.‼In other words, although Mr. Bennet is basically a sensible man, he behaves strangely because of his sarcasm with his wife. Trapped in a bad marriage, he makes life endurable for himself by assuming a pose of an ironic passive spectator of life, who has long ago abandoned his roles as a husband and a father. He amuses himself by pestering his foolish wife or making insensitive remarks about his daughters. Mr. Bennet cruelly mocks his wife silliness and is shown to be sarcastic and cynical with comment s as “…you are as handsome as any of them, Mr. Bingley might like you.”“You mistake me, my dear. I have a high respect for your nerves. They are my old friends. I have heard you mention them with consideration these twenty years at least.”“But I hope you will get over it, and live to see many young men of four thousand a year come into the neighborhood.”［(8) p5］Those utterances are not only show Mr. Bennet trend to make fun of Mrs. Bennet, but also met Jean’s comment about Mrs. Bennet: “The business of her life was to get her daughters married; its solace was visiting and news.”［(8) p6］Those ironic lines constructed and showed the characters of Mrs. Bennet vividly.
The narrative of “Pride and Prejudice” too has an ironic tone which contributes much verbal irony.Jane Austen’s ironic tone is established in the very first sentence of the novel.
“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.”［(8) p1］In fact, it soon becomes clear that Austen means the opposite: women (or their mothers) are always in search of, and desperately on the lookout for, a rich single man to make a husband. The irony deepens as the story promotes his romance and ends in a double wedding. There is much verbal irony in the witty utterances of Mr. Bennet. He tells Elizabeth:
“Let Wickham be your man. He is pleasant fellow and would jilt you creditable …”
(8)
In the words ‘pleasant fellow’ is hidden a dramatic irony at the expense of Mr. Bennet, for Wickham is destined to make a considerable dent in Mr. Bennet's complacency.
In the following point, there is more dramatic irony.
3.1.2 Dramatic irony
Irony is an excellent way for authors to combine wit and drama at the same time. It works well in many parts of Pride and Prejudice. Irony can be found in the gradual revelation of Darcy and Elizabeth's feelings for each other. It provides humor for the readers, yet at the same time, it revolves around the basic plot of the story. It is a great balance between ironic dialogue and movement towards the scenes in the climax of the novel, when the relationship is developed. Another great example of her ironic wit can be found in the first chapter of the novel, when Mrs. Bennet and Mr. Bennet discuss the new tenant of Netherfield Park, Mr. Bingley. Every sentence of that conversation can come back to the opening line of the novel: "It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife."
Now for this sentence, Mrs. Bennet begins by giving one definition of 'universally', while Mr. Bennet gives another.
"Is he married or single?"
"Oh! Single, my dear, to be sure! A single man of large fortune;；four or five thousand a year. What a fine thing for our girls!"
"How so? How can it affect them?"
"My dear Mr. Bennet," replied his wife, "how can you be so tiresome! You must know that I am thinking of his marrying one of them."
"Is that his design in settling here?"
"Design! nonsense, how can you talk so!"［(8) p2］
Mr. Bennet's conversation is quite ironic and very satirical, because of his extreme politeness and playful innocence, which in result, upset Mrs. Bennet. That provides humor for the reader as a result of her dramatic character. Mrs. Bennet's character is not ironic in the least, but it is the blending of both characters that bring about the irony. Such foils point out to us the ridiculousness of human nature and the universal view of marriage in that period of time.
3.1.3 Situational irony
While dramatic irony unveils the common sense of marriage, the situational irony promotes the development of plot and aim to show the theme of the novel.
The situations----at least a good number of them----in Pride and Prejudice are also very ironical. Darcy's first proposal to Elizabeth is made exactly at the moment when Elizabeth hates him most. When Darcy proposes to her she simply rejects him and blames him for separating Jane from Bingley; she further accuses him of his abominable treatment of Wickham. She tells harshly----“my opinion of you was decided. Your character is unfolded in the recital which I received from Mr. Wickham...can you defend yourself?”［(8) p220］
Later on Darcy changes, and happily, the changes are mostly for the better. The changed Darcy does not feel shy of confessing: “I have been a selfish being all my life, in practice, though not in principle." Once Darcy has been humbled, Austen turns her irony on Elizabeth. She shows that Elizabeth in resentment of Darcy's conscious superiority, has exaggerated his faults and failed to see that there is much goodness in him, then again. Lydia's elopement with Wickham, which Elizabeth fears shall spoil her prospects of marriage with Darcy, strangely enough brightens the same. Similarly, Lady Catherine's attempts to prevent this marriage succeeds in only hastening it.。