Irony and Meaning in the Hebrew Bible

Introduction

Ambiguity, paradox, and misdirection play through all literature. This is true to a certain degree even in those kinds of writing whose genres seem to preclude indirection or opacity (lists of addresses, say, or commands in the training manual for a Labrador retriever). The unspoken suffuses and lends force to signification on many levels in texts, by turns charming and frustrating the reader and giving impetus to our efforts to grasp what may remain artistically elusive. Irony is a particularly powerful means of signaling by means of the unspoken. Robert Alter has put it well: “The not saying of something (or the pretending not to say it) is an ancient rhetorical device . . . . Often enough the reticence is intended to increase the impact of what it purports to conceal while making it inevitable that a properly informed reader will at once, and with the added emotion attendant on discovery , recognize what is really meant.”1 Irony persuades by misdirecting in a complex way. Ironic texts require a specific kind of reader competence in order for the communication to have taken place at all: the audience needs to perceive that the communication is unreliable in some crucial respect. If one reads the stories of Jonathan Swift “straight,” as an earnest catalogue of the unusual places to which Gulliver travels, one Introduction 2 Irony and Meaning in the Hebrew Bible completely misses the satirical act of communication about English society , theology, and politics that Swift intended. The vexed matter of authorial intention lies at the heart of current debates about reading. Many interpreters consider the “author” to be long dead and rightly unmourned. But for many others—myself among them—a nuanced notion of author remains essential, even as our view of textual meaning becomes enlivened by an increasingly sophisticated understanding of contextual factors that shape interpretation. True, the inevitability of textual decoding toward which Alter gestured can no longer be taken for granted. These days we see more clearly the unconstrainable nature of intertextuality and cultural bricolage, the dynamic roles played by readers and reading communities in every act of interpretation , and the ways in which texts contradict and erase their own claims even as they are making them. Notions of authority and intention are inevitably functions of discursive strategies and power relations.2 Yet the question of author cannot be ignored when irony is seen to be involved , however complex our idea of author may become, even if “author ” is broadened to include readers’ interactions with texts and communities rather than being strictly identified with the intentions of a single historical person. Consider the question of ironic authorial intention in the following letter written by a Yale student in October 1902 to temperance activist Carry Nation:3 Dear Mrs. Nation:—Although it pains me deeply, I feel it my duty to inform you that after your soul-stirring address of warning and reproof, the Devil still grins at Yale Dining Hall. The enclosed menus tell the story. The hateful practice of serving intoxicating liquors has not ceased. Capt. Smoke holds open wide the gates of hell. Oh, this is terrible! Satan loves to shoot at brightest marks. Here are eight hundred shining young souls, the cream of the nation’s manhood, on the broad road which leadeth to destruction . God Help us. Assist us, Mrs. Nation; aid us; pray for us. Let the world know of this awful condition and rouse the public indignation until it has ceased. Publicity will do it. Let the world know that Yale is being made a training school for drunkards, and Capt. Smoke will never dare to serve liquors again. [Signed,] Alone, But a Friend of the Temperance Cause Is the student’s letter intended earnestly or ironically? Grunwald and Adler are of the opinion that the letter is “almost certainly sincere.” Carry Nation describes this and several other letters she received from Yale stu- Introduction 3 dents as earnest pleas for help, which she subsequently provided, traveling to New Haven. As she tells it, I spoke to the students at the entrance of their dining hall. They spoke up and told me that “Champagne” was served on their ham three times a week. They gave me the menus, and on them were: “Claret Wine Punch,” “Cherry Wine Sauce,” “Apple Dumpling and Brandy Sauce,” “Roast Ham and Champagne Sauce,” and “Wine jelly.” While I was talking to the young men, many were smoking...