Irony of Realism
Frye offers a prolonged discussion of irony in the Third Essay of Anatomy of Criticism. There, irony and satire are one of the four “mythoi” of literature. This refers to the “winter” of literary works in the larger cycle of imagery. He then discusses different types of irony, that is, different categories of ironic works of literature. In particular, he discusses six “phases.” The last three types, or phases 4–6, are the most important, because it is in these that Frye sees irony to be of primary importance. Here is his description of the irony of realism:
As a phase of irony in its own right, the fourth phase looks at tragedy from below, from the moral and realistic perspective of the state of experience. It stresses the humanity of its heroes, minimizes the sense of ritual inevitability in tragedy, supplies social and psychological explanations for catastrophe, and makes as much as possible of human misery seem, in Thoreau's phrase, "superfluous and evitable." This is the phase of most sincere, explicit realism: it is in general Tolstoy's phase, and also that of a good deal of Hardy and Conrad. (237)
In the examples provided here, works of literature are ironic because of their ruthless depiction of everyday life. Irony comes from the sense of distance and dread that writers have to this depiction.
Irony of Fatalism
The second-to-last phase of irony discussed by Frye is the irony of fatalism. Here is his description:
The fifth phase, corresponding to fatalistic or fifth-phase tragedy, is irony in which the main emphasis is on the natural cycle, the steady unbroken turning of the wheel of fate or fortune. It sees experience, in our terms, with the point of epiphany closed up, and its motto is Browning's "there may be heaven; there must be hell." Like the corresponding phase of tragedy, it is less moral and more generalized and metaphysical in its interest, less melioristic and more stoical and resigned. The treatment of Napoleon in War and Peace and in The Dynasts affords a good contrast between the fourth and fifth phases of irony. (237)
The irony of fatalism is, in other words, a resignation to fate. It is a bitter depiction of the inevitability of death as well as the inevitability of history repeating itself in war and destruction. It derives its ironic force from the cynicism that this kind of depiction entails.
Irony of Bondage
The final phase of irony in Anatomy of Criticism contains works of literature we might identify as dystopian:
The sixth phase presents human life in terms of largely unrelieved bondage. Its settings feature prisons, madhouses, lynching mobs, and places of execution, and it differs from a pure inferno mainly in the fact that in human experience suffering has an end in death. In our day the chief form of this phase is the nightmare of social tyranny, of which 1984 is perhaps the most familiar. We often find, on this boundary of the visio malefica, the use of parody—religious symbols suggesting some form of Satan or Antichrist worship. In Kafka's "In the Penal Colony" a parody of original sin appears in the officer's remark, "Guilt is never to be doubted." In 1984 the parody of religion in the final scenes is more elaborate: there is a parody of the atonement, for instance, when the hero is tortured into urging that the torments be inflicted on the heroine instead. (238)
As in the previous phase, these works of literature derive much of their ironic force from cynicism, a biting diagnosis of the ways in which the world impede human freedom. Here, that kind of bondage is made systemic. It’s not just that individuals are resigned to their individual fates; it’s that we are all resigned to our social bondage. Operating at this systemic scale, this is the highest level of irony.
