Exploration of Irony in Booth and Killingsworth

In consideration of Killingworth's concepts on irony as a liberating device, I found Booth's concepts of irony as an exclusionary device to be quite ironic (hyak, hyak, hyak, OK, I'll stop). Booth points out that irony’s reliance on contextually, the meaning of a work depending on works external to itself, permits it to become a disguise for a work’s lack of authorial intent: “impersonal ironic narration lends itself neatly, far too neatly, to disguised expression of snobbery which would never be tolerated if expressed openly in commentary” (Booth 391).

In my PE on Killingsworth I found that irony was successful in revealing the hidden immoral intents of discourses by taking on the guise of that intent. The reader sees the intent themselves through an appeal by the author to the inner, moral conventions which conflict with the immorality of the piece. In other words, the author reveals his true intent in terms of inner realities already present in the reader’s self. This is why irony is so powerful because it makes it appear that the author and reader formulated the idea together. This cooperation also positions the reader and author against an excluded other, the supposed immoral.  

The reason irony can be misused in the sense that Booth points out is because of the innerness of the reader’s realities to which the author appeals. How can a reader be sure that their inner realities match those of others in society? When irony is used in a work but the work lacks authorial intent, the reader may think that they do not see the intent because they are part of the other being excluded. It may put in the reader’s mind that the inner realities which were guide his/her life silently is opposed to those realities which govern society, causing them to become marginalized and excluded. It may be safer, therefore,  to accept the work instead of questioning its intent.

Irony works in liberating immoral intents by uniting the author and reader’s inner realities, and by excluding an “other.” A fear of becoming “other”, however, is also what causes readers to accept false irony.