Introduction -- 1. Bi-planar Semiotics -- 2. A temporary leap of faith -- Part I -- Chapter One The syntactico-semantic paradigm of irony: and beyond -- 1. General formulae of irony -- 2. Referentiality: the ontological status of the entities articu¬lated in irony -- 3. Taxonomy -- 4. Syntax -- 5. The indices of irony -- 6. Towards a pragmatics of ironic context -- 7. 'Miscellaneous' and 'specificity': the uncontained residue of rhetoric -- 8. Five semiotic formulae -- 9. Paradigmatization of the correlations between the rhetori¬cal and the semiotic meta-languages of irony and the resultant view of the ontological status of irony -- 10. Conclusion: the rhetorical episteme -- A kind of postscript to chapter one -- Part II -- Chapter One An ironic twist of a semiotics of narrative: Friedrich Schlegel's Roman -- 1. Five semiotic formulae (1.1-1.5) -- 2. "Individual relativism of speech perception" -- 3. Crises confronting the semiotics mode -- 4. Partiality of semiotic solution to irony -- Chapter Two Irony the iconoclast: The crisis of representation -- 1. Hegelian Phenomenology versus Schlegelian Irony -- 2. The negative dialectics of irony -- 3. Adorno versus Schlegel: The fragmented connection -- 4. Schelling versus Schlegel: recuperation versus praxis -- Chapter Three "Über die Unverständlichkeit": Irony as communicational deconstruction of the semiotic paradigm -- 1. Irony of semantic exchange -- 2. Irony of the "Isotopy" -- 3. The (inter)-semiosic irony of analysis -- 4. Irony of codes -- 5. Irony of temporal distinctions -- 6. Irony of the ontological status of the subject of enuncia¬tion -- Conclusion -- Bibliography -- Index of Names -- Index of Subjects.