Journal of Literary Criticism and Rhetoric

Journal of Literary Criticism and Rhetoric

A Pathological Approach to Irony Studies in Persian Literature

Document Type : scientific-research

Author
Seyyed Mahmoud Reza Gheibi
Department of Persian language and literature,, Marand Branch, Islamic Azad University, Marand Iran
10.22059/jlcr.2025.380548.2014
Abstract
Irony as one of the discussions in rhetorical sciences has been disputable since the beginning until now and there has been no single definition which could have explained the essence of this rhetorical/linguistic technique in a correct way. One of the most controversial and frequent literary topics is the topic of irony, one of the subsets of rhetoric. Understanding the meanings of combinations and words in Persian literary texts is in the category of understanding the ironic and secondary meanings of those combinations. In books and articles on rhetoric, different definitions with different examples have appeared. However, for the researchers in this field, there has been an Achilles heel, and those who have started a new research, put their hands on that weak point. The present study tries to have a pathological approach to landslides of irony, the definitions of irony and their weak points, the methods of studies on irony, and the neglected point’s by the researchers. In addition, and the cases on the pathology of irony studies have been discussed. The research method in this study is descriptive and analytical. The statistical population of this research includes several rhetorical books, which were discussed and compared after a detailed study of the definitions and explanations and examples in these sources, and the most important points of commonality and difference between them were examined. After examining different rhetorical and linguistic sources and discussing about the existing samples, it was found that the most important weak points in the pathology of irony included neglecting some issues such as ordinary speech, text, and dialectical and social matters, etc. Critics and commentators have not considered everyday language to have metaphors and allusions and have always tried to extract all examples of rhetoric from literary texts; In the existing rhetorical books, various definitions of irony have been presented, these definitions are to the extent that sometimes they overlap and include, sometimes they are contradictory .Suggestions were offered for these cases.
Keywords
Figure of speech
Irony
Literary Criticism
Pathology
Rhetorical Sciences
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  • Receive Date 29 September 2024
  • Revise Date 31 March 2025
  • Accept Date 09 April 2025