Erotic Irony

4 posts / 0 new

Topic locked

Wed, 2003-09-17 07:35

Erotic Irony

The concept of "erotic irony" was introduced by Thomas Mann.

I suppose that he was meditating on the figure of Cupid, the angel of love, who shoots arrows at people so that they may experience the magical thing called love. Thomas Mann defined the wound that love gave to lovers with the term "erotic irony."

So in Buddingbrooks, the ironic treatment of the characters is inspired by love as Thomas Mann sees it, that is, his desire to wound the very people whom he loves, and therefore, show them as incomplete, needy humans.

I was also thinking that erotic irony, in the case of Thomas Mann, also implied homosexual love and that, it was ironic because it was understated.
"The love that dare not speak its name," is how Wilde once described homosexuality although I suspect that others before him coined the phrase.

I just wanted to know if some of you writers out there found that "erotic irony" was also a literary device that could be used to make contradictory trends in a story cohere. For example, if a character hates the antagonist and yet, is doing everything in the character's power to see that the antagonist succeeds.

Some French intellectuals also seem to stick up for some awful world leaders, leaders who represent none of the values that they esteem. Is there some type of erotic irony in this?

Fri, 2003-09-19 00:44

d.beswetherick

Maybe it is erotic irony, as you call it, in "Sea of Love". The closer Al Pacino gets to Ellin Barkin sexually, the more likely it is that she's the murderer he's tracking down. [%sig%]

Fri, 2003-09-19 05:04

Steven

Oscar Wilde also says that "each man kills the thing he loves." OF course, his boyfriend was the one who turned him in... Yes in "Sea of Love," there is a relation to death and sex that people recognize. The French call an orgasm a "small death." Of course, for the most sperms, it is literally a small death... *amused* Also in "Basic Instinct." I was also thinking that since "love" is related to the death of the ego or the self-centered self, that the threat that love represented to the ego was seen figuratively as the threat that death would later impose upon it... that is, it's destruction. I guess I was wondering why so many movies are obsessed with the theme of sex and violence, and what meaning it has outside of its "glamour."

Sat, 2003-09-27 20:13

neil_the_auditor

... putting the setting to "silk" and searing those crisp seams into the gleaming white power-blouse of your female boss ... ... ranking up to "cotton" and, with the soft hiss of escaping steam, pressing flat the luscious lacy edging of ... ... sorry, did you say "erotic ironing"??? [%sig%]

Topic locked