|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Postmodernism, Romantic Irony, and Classical Closure |
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
'Irony is no joking matter' F. Schlegel
'The opposite of irony is common sense' R. Rorty |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
'Closure' in all its senses1 has often been seen as a distinguishing characteristic of classicism. The classic work is a rounded organic whole, simplex et unum: it ends in resolution, 'all passion spent'. Antiquity is a closed system, providing a canon of texts whose perfection is beyond time: criticism of those texts is an eternal return, the rediscovery of the timeless verities that they contain. The Classical Tradition is a golden chain which enables us to 'take our journey back' as Edwin Muir puts it. And at the end of all our journeying are those same everlasting Forms of Beauty that have always been there and always will be. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
No one, of course, has ever really believed this nonsense. There are much messier stories to tell of the 'real' Classical Tradition, and classical studies as a discipline have always been much more 'open', again in every sense. We should not complain as professionals that others get it 'wrong': one of the functions of the classical ideal has always been to enable rebellion from it, to function as a dreary father-figure for the Oedipal revolt of Romantics and Moderns. But many recent critics have rightly seen as one of their tasks the demonstration that the texts of the classical canon can fail just as successfully as other texts to attain classical perfection. Looking for a contrast to the novel, the American critic R.M. Adams2 was happy to write in the 1950s of the Oedipus Tyrannus that: |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
the play is a self-contained unit; there is nothing within it which calls attention to or criticises its aesthetic existence; there is no unresolved or discordant element to disturb its conclusion; in its psychological effects it is a unified and harmonious whole that passes the audience through a clear, easily defined and complete emotional cycle to a distinct logical and emotional conclusion. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
1 Cf. Fowler (1989). A revised version of that article will appear in a volume of essays on closure that I am editing with D.H. Roberts and F. Dunn. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
2 Adams (1958) 26. See Fowler (1989) 801. |
|
|
|
|
|