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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Irony in Thomas De Quincey's works

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Studying the works of De Quincey necessarily leads to three concepts almost impossible to define: autobiography, Romanticism, and all-too neglected irony. Whether rhetorical, tragic or “romantic”, irony expresses perfectly the many contradictions of the opium-eater. As the rhetorical tool of conflict and self-derision, claiming both individualistic and community values, sociable and provoking, irony is the way to redemption as much as the expression of deep unease, a way of pushing himself forward, or of withdrawing into the background. Caught between Romanticism and Victorianism, De Quincey questions the limits of his own identity and his status as an intellectual, and exploits reluctantly the potential subversion of parody, so that irony seems to yield to nostalgia and self-derogatory laments. And yet it can be said to underlie the vitality and diversity of the essays, whose modernity has been greatly underestimated by the critics and by De Quincey himself, as well. Finally, irony allows us to re-evaluate the Confessions as the centre of a unified, though diverse, set of writing, rather than as one of many, rather ill-assorted essays of unequal value.