Abstract

This paper explores and analyses irony implied in Thomas Mann's The Transposed Heads. The novel is set in Indian myth. The story has one woman and two men and they have a triangular relationship. The woman who lusts for two men: one who has beautiful mind and other who has beautiful body; and she shares bed with both men and dies with them. The novel turns out a battleground of the conflict between human emotion and intellect. It puts the binary of head and body on the horizontal line opposite to the existing vertical line. Irony lies in this juxtaposition of the transposed heads- heads set in wrong bodies. The woman gets pleasure of body and head. Irony is here in revelation of the discrepancy between physical desire and spiritual desire. Mann reconciles the binary by leaning on the side of the body. He focuses on the practical human needs rather than the spiritual and theoretical. He subverts the definitions of pious and profane love.