The Politics of Irony in Thackeray's Mature Fiction: Vanity Fair, The History of Henry Esmond, The Newcomes

Zelma Catalan teaches English Literature and Literary Stylistics at the Department of English and American Studies, Sofia University. Her publications cover a wide range of topics related to Victorian literature and the stylistics of the novel. She has also been involved in various projects in the area of teaching and assessing writing and communicative skills.

The Politics of Irony in Thackeray's Mature Fiction: Vanity Fair, The History of Henry Esmond, The Newcomes is a comprehensive study of Thackeray's systematic use of irony in his greatest novels. Zelma Catalan argues that while it is grounded in the writer`s total allegiance to representational truth, being a transideological, transdis-cursive strategy, his irony also problema-tizes the basic aims and tenets of classic realism. Investigating the novels from a structural, narrative and stylistic perspective, the author shows Thackeray`s gradual transition from an irony that asserts the Victorian philosophy and aesthetic towards an art precariously held together by an oppositional ironic paradigm.