2 - The setting of irony

Summary

The introductory scenes of Galdós' novels invariably foreshadow the ironic themes of the entire work, while at the same time epitomizing the structure of those ironies. These descriptions of settings present the multiple meanings which the reader will encounter: the apparent (literal) and the deeper (figurative) levels of vraisemblance. When these levels come into contradiction, their significance changes from the metaphorical to the ironic. The scenes described no longer remain straightforward statements, but become ironic commentaries upon the codes of meaning traversing the text, as well as on themselves, and thus become intrinsically self-ironizing. The reader is responsible for seeing beyond the first, apparent meaning by recognizing stylistic clues in the language. The ironic significance of the setting described, like that of the portrait, is understood through, while being reflected in, its linguistic composition. This specular relationship between ‘meaning’ and ‘form’ parallels, in turn, the homology between the reader's comprehension and the stylistic features of the text. Devices such as oxymoron, hyperbole, simile, metaphor, catechresis, inversion, antithesis, anaphora, allegory, and isocolon create and signal the ironic relationships which exist between the several meanings. The frequent combination of styles, from the elaborately literary to the plainly colloquial, ironically contrasts these codes of speech and their corresponding connotations, just as the play of voices in the portrait does. The impressionistic effects which often result illustrate both the variety of ways in which the ‘real’ might be visualized, and how the ironic significance of the picture is gradually perceived. This is the same process of understanding – or naturalizing – irony at work in the novel as a whole, and in the reader's final evaluation of its importance for him.