Chapter Forme e funzioni dell’ironia in Libera nos a malo

Abstract

Irony is the most evident stylistic trait in Meneghello’s writing and personality. Widely recognized by critics, and by the author himself, it appears first and foremost as a mechanism for controlling emotion and opposing rhetorical showing off. But it is also a powerful cognitive tool, an underlying tension in his style, that allows the most diverse levels of reality to be grasped in their interaction. Thus the reader becomes ensnared in a subtle game, where the ironic target slips away again and again in a dynamic and productive synergy of differing points of view. In the end, the outcome of derision, or, worse, sarcasm, is avoided, and a complicit and sympathetic smile is achieved, rooted in reflection and emotion. The variety of Meneghello’s writings opens up an extraordinary line of enquiry: in this paper are offered a few short surveys of his debut masterpiece, in particular of the dialectic between two points of view, one from below – that of the child – and the other from above – that of Meneghello as Professor.