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Unless my title is ironic — and it isn"t — it must be tendentious, since it presupposes that irony is Limited (that is, has limits) and that art does indeed have a future. ¹ The only questions then remaining would be what the limits are and what art will look like in that future. But neither of those first assumptions is self-evident or for that matter evident at all. We have heard talk (and shall hear more here) about the end or the death of art - something of a future, although not one that promises much comfort; and by far the greater emphasis in modern views of irony (the importance attached to irony is largely modern) has been on the absence in irony of all and any limits. I propose to discuss these two views (and their alternatives) in light of what I claim to be an underlying connection between them; that is, in the relationship between art and irony. Even if art and irony were not related in any deep sense, the questions of what the limits of each were individually would warrant discussion; with a connection, that question becomes more pressing still.

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-011-0902-4_6

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