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Irony alerts in the 14th century

By jquiggin | April 17, 2003

‘Truly this is the sweetest of theologies’, William said, with perfect humility, and I thought he was using that insidious figure of speech that rhetors call irony, which must always be prefaced by the pronunciato, representing its signal and its justification - something that William never did. For which reason the abbot, more inclined to the use of figures of speech, took William literally …

Umberto Eco The Name of the Rose

Topics: Metablogging |

One Response to “Irony alerts in the 14th century”

  1. Crooked Timber » » The dormitive quality of rational choice Says:
    October 10th, 2007 at 9:51 pm

    [...] These days, they tend to know a lot of math, and math is a very useful thing. Matt omitted the irony alerts, but I tried to spell out the same point here. Given any data on any observed set of problems [...]