A Kierkegaardian Reading of David Foster Wallace

This work explores the fiction of David Foster Wallace through frameworks developed by nineteenth century Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard to foreground the similarities in their approaches to the problem of irony, as well as in their strategies for overcoming the cynicism they believe it often produces. Kierkegaard's thesis, "The Concept of Irony: With Continual Reference to Socrates" is the focal point for the discussion of irony in this paper, where it will be argued that Wallace, li...