SOURCE: “A Tyrant on the Loose in Goethe's Novelle,” in Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies, Vol. 25, No. 4, November, 1989, pp. 306-23.

In the following essay, Barry offers what he calls an “ironic reading” of Goethe's Novelle to show that the text is too rich to suggest only one “secret meaning.”

In spite of Ian Watt's elegant plea nearly thirty years ago (480) to have it replaced by humour in the critical pantheon, irony has, for better or worse, maintained its hold over the thinking of many scholars. The principal danger it runs, and has always run, is that of justifying all possible interpretations of a text: we may make this mean what we want it to mean merely by declaring that any indications to the contrary are intended only ironically. Yet it is precisely in this potential absurdity that one might find good reason for the influence that irony...