Irony and Creative Narrative Mechanism: Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

This paper investigates irony as a pivotal creative mechanism in Jane Austen’s novels(1775~1817) through an interdisciplinary exploration. Drawing from post-structuralist perspectives, we diverge from the fixed semantic interpretation of irony and instead emphasize its structural characteristics. In this sense, irony is defined as ‘a third product and its effect resulting from the contradiction between two opposing elements.’ In Chapter 2, we correlate this structural development of irony with the novel’s narrative, exploring its dialectical nature. Additionally, we engage with Žižek’s theory of ‘open dialectic,’ a psychoanalytic reinterpretation of Hegel. In Chapter 3, irony is linked to the mechanism of metaphor within Lacanian linguistics. This unique form of irony, a third production of laughter effect arising from the contradiction of two opposing elements, is akin to Austen’s ‘smile’ of truth and what A. Badiou terms the indiscernible. Ultimately, we find that Mr. Darcy’s transformation toward humility defies easy categorization; his arrogance exists as an open-ended, perpetual dialectical conceptual movement of ontological indeterminacy.