Irony is a figure of speech in which language is used to convey the opposite of what is expressed, or at least the listener is made to think that what is said is not entirely true. The Promessi Sposi is thus most definitely “ironic”, with various degrees of irony. One obvious kind of irony that is straightforward and immediately apparent to readers is the narrator’s joking and good-natured tone. One example from the beginning of the novel (Chapter I), where we read that the soldiers of the Spanish garrison “taught modesty to the young ladies and older women of the village” and “caressed from time to time the shoulders of a husband” (the words actually pointing to the soldier’s violence). Another, more complex kind of irony relates to the institutions, customs and culture of the novel’s seventeenth century setting. The butt of the irony here is the irrationality of laws, and governmental inability to ensure that laws are obeyed, as happens in the case of the “edicts” read by the lawyer Azzecca-garbugli (Chapter III). The chivalric code is ridiculed, an anachronism even in the seventeenth century, as in the case of the quarrel over who has right of way, leading to the duel between Lodovico (the future Father Cristoforo) and the arrogant aristocrat (Chapter IV). His irony nurtured by Enlightenment culture and philosophical-religious reflection, Manzoni makes fun of the false “science” of seventeenth century intellectuals and men of letters: Don Ferrante believes that the plague depends on astrology and so takes no precautions against infection (Chapter XXXVII). Irony can become indignation and bitter ideological polemic against popular superstition and the bad faith of the judges who condemned the untori (the presumed “plague-spreaders”) in 1630 (Chapters XXXI-XXXII). Moreover, the author’s self-irony also plays an important role in the structure of the novel: frequently alluding to his novel and his role as narrator and creator of the story, he encourages readers not to take what he says too seriously.