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Verbal Irony in Tom Jones

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 February 2021

Eleanor N. Hutchens
Eleanor N. Hutchens*
Affiliation:
Agnes Scott College, Decatur, Ga.
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Extract

Without its verbal irony, Tom Jones would be quite a different book: massive and well made but lacking the high polish and the effect of urbane control which do much to preserve it as a major classic. Its realism, its satire, and even its much-praised plot keep their unified brilliance through being governed by an ironic style that forms as important a contribution to the English novel as any Fielding made.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 77 , Issue 1 , 1962 , pp. 46 - 50
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1962

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References

Notes

1 On the French influence, see Wayne C. Booth, “The Self-Conscious Narrator in Comic Fiction before Tristram Shandy,” PMLA, lxvii (1952), 163-185.

2 “‘Prudence’ in Tom Jones,” PQ, xxxix, 4 (October 1960), 496-507.

3 Some readers seem not to have the inward ear with which others hear whatever they silently read. To them, what is here called tonal irony may appear to be purely a matter of syntax or sentence structure.