Postfeminist Irony in Contemporary English and French Chick-Lit

Tsapro, Galyna (2025) Postfeminist Irony in Contemporary English and French Chick-Lit Вчені записки Таврійського національного університету імені В. І. Вернадського. Серія: Філологія. Журналістика., 2 (37(75)). с. 87-92. ISSN 2710-4664

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Анотація

The article examines irony as a central stylistic and ideological feature of contemporary English and French chick-lit written between 1996 and 2025. The research traces how the comic tone of early postfeminist prose gradually transforms into a reflective and emotionally balanced form of narration that links humour with awareness, restraint, and empathy. The material includes ten novels representing successive stages of the genre’s development and showing the transformation of the female voice in popular fiction. The study combines stylistic and discourse analysis to explain how language conveys distance, tenderness, and self-observation and how these features construct a dynamic model of femininity. Irony characterises English chick-lit novels with exaggeration and self-commentary, which in its turn hides the main characters' vulnerability beneath verbal play. In French prose, it unfolds through understatement, syntactic balance, and tonal precision, transforming reflection into a dominant mode of expression. The comparison of two literary traditions demonstrates that irony becomes a sign of maturity, representing women’s experience. Humour and control act as parallel forms of self-expression, while the gradual movement from hyperbole to simplicity defines the stylistic reorientation of the genre. Irony unites confession with reflection, turning speech into recognition. Irony goes together with sincerity in this way, demonstrating the shift from irony as defence to irony as empathy. The study demonstrates that irony, once a gesture of detachment, now serves as a means of understanding. It functions as both a stylistic principle and an ethical choice, linking self-irony with authenticity and giving contemporary women’s prose its distinctive tone of resilience and grace. The evolution of irony through three stages of chick-lit development reflects a transition in sensibility: irony ceases to veil emotion and begins to articulate it, defining the postfeminist search for meaning through language, where irony becomes the medium of emotional truth.

Тип елементу :	Стаття
Ключові слова:	postfeminism; irony; chick-lit; English and French women’s fiction; discourse analysis; comparative literature; gender and language
Типологія:	Статті у періодичних виданнях > Фахові (входять до переліку фахових, затверджений МОН)
Підрозділи:	Факультет романо-германської філології > Кафедра англійської мови та комунікації
Користувач, що депонує:	доцент Галина Юріївна Цапро
Дата внесення:	23 Бер 2026 13:54
Останні зміни:	23 Бер 2026 13:54
URI:	https://elibrary.kubg.edu.ua/id/eprint/56696

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