I: The Evolution of Irony -- I: The Ironic Vision in Modern Literature -- II: Tragic Irony: Ancient and Modern -- II: The Philosophers Set the Stage for the Ironic Vision -- III: Schopenhauer: The Implicit Irony of Pessimism -- IV: The Dilemma of the Superman -- III: Religious Irony -- V: Irony and the Religious Quest -- VI: Death the Supreme Ironist -- IV: Irony in Modern Poetry, Fiction, and Drama -- VII: Thomas Hardy the Cosmic Ironist -- VIII: Anatole France and Aesthetic Irony -- IX: Chekhov's Naturalistic Irony -- X: Illusion Versus Reality -- V: Irony and the Diabolical -- XI: The Devil as Ironist -- XII: The Irony of Thomas Mann -- VI: The Nihilism of the Absurd and the Absurdity of Art -- XIII: The Irony of the Absurd -- VII: Conclusion -- XIV: Conclusion.