irony WAS RE: is Pynchon a recluse?

[Terrance]

Doug Millison wrote:
> 
> dramatic irony
> in literature, a plot device in which the audience's or reader's knowledge
> of events or individuals surpasses that of the characters. The words and
> actions of the characters therefore take on a different meaning for the
> audience or reader than they have for the play's characters. This may happen
> when, for example, a character reacts in an inappropriate or foolish way or
> when a character lacks self-awareness and thus acts under false assumptions.

This is a plot device. 



> 
> "dramatic irony" Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
> <http://www.members.eb.com/bol/topic?eu=137167&sctn=1>
> [Accessed 15 June 2001].
> 
> Malign:
> I've never thought of Pynchon particularly as an ironist, would never have
> thought to describe him as such.  Philip Roth, Martin Amis--Nabokov,
> surely--but not Pynchon.


But if you want to define an ironist, you might begin, not
with one device, say tht old 
self-consciousness or distance or what shall we call it,
there are too many terms in lterature and literary theory
aren't there, standpoint, attitude, and how does this
function and how does irony function and  with some boxes,
but of 
course these will only trip us up as we step into the round
holes. So, is Pynchon  an ironist as Swift is, as Mann is,
as Joyce is (is Joyce an ironist Terrance?), how about
Camus? Aristophenes, Cervantes, Shaekespeare, Chaucer? What
about Poe? Dante? 

Say, is Pig Bodine P's Falstaff?