juxtaposition
Juxtaposition is an act or instance of placing two elements close together or side by side. This is often done in order to compare/contrast the two, to show similarities or differences, etc.
Speech
Juxtaposition in literary terms is the showin ...
of what on the surface appears to be the case and what is actually the case or to be expected; it is an important rhetorical device and literary technique.
Irony can be categorized into different types, including ''
verbal irony
Irony (), in its broadest sense, is the juxtaposition of what on the surface appears to be the case and what is actually the case or to be expected; it is an important rhetorical device and literary technique.
Irony can be categorized into ...
'', ''
dramatic irony
Irony (), in its broadest sense, is the juxtaposition of what on the surface appears to be the case and what is actually the case or to be expected; it is an important rhetorical device and literary technique.
Irony can be categorized into ...
'', and ''
situational irony
Irony (), in its broadest sense, is the juxtaposition of what on the surface appears to be the case and what is actually the case or to be expected; it is an important rhetorical device and literary technique.
Irony can be categorized into d ...
''. Verbal, dramatic, and situational irony are often used for emphasis in the assertion of a
truth
Truth is the property of being in accord with fact or reality.Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionarytruth 2005 In everyday language, truth is typically ascribed to things that aim to represent reality or otherwise correspond to it, such as belie ...
. The ironic form of
simile
A simile () is a figure of speech that directly ''compares'' two things. Similes differ from other metaphors by highlighting the similarities between two things using comparison words such as "like", "as", "so", or "than", while other metaphors c ...
, used in
sarcasm
Sarcasm is the caustic use of words, often in a humorous way, to mock someone or something. Sarcasm may employ ambivalence, although it is not necessarily ironic. Most noticeable in spoken word, sarcasm is mainly distinguished by the inflection ...
, and some forms of
litotes
In rhetoric, litotes (, or ), also known classically as ''antenantiosis'' or ''moderatour'', is a figure of speech and form of verbal irony in which understatement is used to emphasize a point by stating a negative to further affirm a positive, o ...
can emphasize one's meaning by the deliberate use of language which states the opposite of the truth, denies the contrary of the truth, or drastically and obviously understates a factual connection.
Definitions
Henry Watson Fowler
Henry Watson Fowler (10 March 1858 – 26 December 1933) was an English schoolmaster, lexicographer and commentator on the usage of the English language. He is notable for both ''A Dictionary of Modern English Usage'' and his work on the ''Con ...
, in ''
The King's English
''The King's English'' is a book on English usage and grammar. It was written by the brothers Henry Watson Fowler and Francis George Fowler and published in 1906; it thus predates by twenty years '' Modern English Usage'', which was written by ...
'', says, "any definition of irony—though hundreds might be given, and very few of them would be accepted—must include this, that the surface meaning and the underlying meaning of what is said are not the same." Also, Eric Partridge, in '' Usage and Abusage'', writes that "Irony consists in stating the contrary of what is meant."
The use of irony may require the concept of a ''double audience''. Fowler's ''
A Dictionary of Modern English Usage
''A Dictionary of Modern English Usage'' (1926), by Henry Watson Fowler (1858–1933), is a style guide to British English usage, pronunciation, and writing. Covering topics such as plurals and literary technique, distinctions among like word ...
'' says:
Irony is a form of utterance that postulates a double audience, consisting of one party that hearing shall hear & shall not understand, & another party that, when more is meant than meets the ear, is aware both of that more & of the outsiders' incomprehension.Fowler, H. W., ''A Dictionary of Modern English Usage'', 1926.
The term is sometimes used as a synonym for ''incongruous'' and applied to "every trivial oddity" in situations where there is no double audience. An example of such usage is:
Sullivan, whose real interest was, ironically, serious music, which he composed with varying degrees of success, achieved fame for his comic opera scores rather than for his more earnest efforts.
The ''
American Heritage Dictionary
American(s) may refer to:
* American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America"
** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America
** American ancestry, p ...
'' secondary meaning for ''irony'': "incongruity between what might be expected and what actually occurs". This sense, however, is not synonymous with "incongruous" but merely a definition of dramatic or situational irony. It is often included in definitions of irony ''not only'' that incongruity is present ''but also'' that the incongruity must reveal some aspect of human vanity or folly. Thus the majority of ''American Heritage Dictionarys usage panel found it unacceptable to use the word ''ironic'' to describe mere unfortunate coincidences or surprising disappointments that "suggest no particular lessons about human vanity or folly."
On this aspect, ''
The Oxford English Dictionary
The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' (''OED'') is the first and foundational historical dictionary of the English language, published by Oxford University Press (OUP). It traces the historical development of the English language, providing a com ...
'' (''OED'') has also:
Douglas C. Muecke identifies three basic features of all irony. First, irony depends on a double-layered or two-story phenomenon for success. "At the lower level is the situation either as it appears to the victim of irony (where there is a victim) or as it is deceptively presented by the ironist." The upper level is the situation as it appears to the reader or the ironist. Second, the ironist exploits a contradiction, incongruity, or incompatibility between the two levels. Third, irony plays upon the innocence of a character or victim. "Either a victim is confidently unaware of the very possibility of there being an upper level or point of view that invalidates his own, or an ironist pretends not to be aware of it."
Etymology
According to ''
Encyclopædia Britannica
The (Latin for "British Encyclopædia") is a general knowledge English-language encyclopaedia. It is published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.; the company has existed since the 18th century, although it has changed ownership various t ...
'':
According to Richard Whately:
The word came into English as a figure of speech in the 16th century as similar to the French ''ironie''. It derives from the Latin ''ironia'' and ultimately from the Greek ''εἰρωνεία'' eirōneía, meaning 'dissimulation, ignorance purposely affected'.''The Oxford English Dictionary'', "irony" entry.
Typology
''The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics'' distinguishes between the following types of irony:Preminger, A. & Brogan, T. V. F. Brogan,
''The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics'', MJF Books, 1993, , pp. 633–635.
*''Classical irony'': Referring to the origins of irony in Ancient Greek comedy, and the way classical and medieval rhetoricians delineated the term.
*''Romantic irony'': A self-aware and self-critical form of fiction.
*''Cosmic irony'': A contrast between the absolute and the relative, the general and the individual, which Hegel expressed by the phrase, "general ronyof the world."
*''Verbal irony'': A contradiction between a statement's stated and intended meaning
*''Situational irony'': The disparity of intention and result; when the result of an action is contrary to the desired or expected effect.
*''Dramatic irony'' and ''tragic irony'': A disparity of awareness between an actor and an observer: when words and actions possess significance that the listener or audience understands, but the speaker or character does not. It is most often used when the author causes a character to speak or act erroneously, out of ignorance of some portion of the truth of which the audience is aware. In tragic irony, the audience knows the character is making a mistake, even as the character is making it.
*''Meta irony'': When an ironic or sarcastic joke is presented through an ironic lens, or "being ironic about being ironic" and even meta ironic statements are ironicised.
Verbal irony
According to ''A glossary of literary terms'' by
Abrams Abrams may refer to:
* Abrams (surname), a list of notable people with the surname
* '' Abrams v. United States'', 250 U.S. 616 (1919), U.S. Supreme Court decision regarding free speech during times of war
* M1 Abrams, main battle tank
* Abrams, W ...
and
Harpham
Harpham is a small village and civil parishes in England, civil parish in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England. It is located just south of the A614 road, approximately north-east of Driffield and south-west of Bridlington.
The civil parish ...
,
''Verbal irony'' is a statement in which the meaning that a speaker employs is sharply different from the meaning that is ostensibly expressed. An ironic statement usually involves the explicit expression of one attitude or evaluation, but with indications in the overall speech-situation that the speaker intends a very different, and often opposite, attitude or evaluation.
Verbal irony is distinguished from situational irony and dramatic irony in that it is produced ''intentionally'' by speakers. For instance, if a man exclaims, "I'm not upset!" but reveals an upset emotional state through his voice while truly trying to claim he's not upset, it would not be verbal irony by virtue of its verbal manifestation (it would, however, be situational irony). But if the same speaker said the same words and intended to communicate that he was upset by claiming he was not, the utterance would be verbal irony. This distinction illustrates an important aspect of verbal irony—speakers communicate implied propositions that are intentionally contradictory to the propositions contained in the words themselves. There are, however, examples of verbal irony that do not rely on saying the opposite of what one means, and there are cases where all the traditional criteria of irony exist and the utterance is not ironic.
In a clear example from literature, in
Shakespeare
William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's natio ...
's ''
Julius Caesar
Gaius Julius Caesar (; ; 12 July 100 BC – 15 March 44 BC), was a Roman general and statesman. A member of the First Triumvirate, Caesar led the Roman armies in the Gallic Wars before defeating his political rival Pompey in a civil war, ...
'',
Mark Antony
Marcus Antonius (14 January 1 August 30 BC), commonly known in English as Mark Antony, was a Roman politician and general who played a critical role in the transformation of the Roman Republic from a constitutional republic into the au ...
Brutus
Marcus Junius Brutus (; ; 85 BC – 23 October 42 BC), often referred to simply as Brutus, was a Roman politician, orator, and the most famous of the assassins of Julius Caesar. After being adopted by a relative, he used the name Quintus Serv ...
("But Brutus says he was ambitious; / And Brutus is an honourable man"), while actually condemning them. "We're left in no doubt as to who's ambitious and who's honourable. The literal truth of what's written clashes with the perceived truth of what's meant to revealing effect, which is irony in a nutshell".
Ironic similes are a form of verbal irony where a speaker intends to communicate the opposite of what they mean.
Sarcasm
A fair amount of confusion has surrounded the issue of the relationship between verbal irony and
sarcasm
Sarcasm is the caustic use of words, often in a humorous way, to mock someone or something. Sarcasm may employ ambivalence, although it is not necessarily ironic. Most noticeable in spoken word, sarcasm is mainly distinguished by the inflection ...
.
Fowler's ''
A Dictionary of Modern English Usage
''A Dictionary of Modern English Usage'' (1926), by Henry Watson Fowler (1858–1933), is a style guide to British English usage, pronunciation, and writing. Covering topics such as plurals and literary technique, distinctions among like word ...
'' (1926; reprinted to at least 2015) states:
Sarcasm does not necessarily involve irony and irony has often no touch of sarcasm.
This suggests that the two concepts are linked but may be considered separately. ''The Oxford English Dictionary'''s entry for
sarcasm
Sarcasm is the caustic use of words, often in a humorous way, to mock someone or something. Sarcasm may employ ambivalence, although it is not necessarily ironic. Most noticeable in spoken word, sarcasm is mainly distinguished by the inflection ...
does not mention irony, but the irony entry includes:
The ''
Encyclopædia Britannica
The (Latin for "British Encyclopædia") is a general knowledge English-language encyclopaedia. It is published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.; the company has existed since the 18th century, although it has changed ownership various t ...
'' has "Non-literary irony is often called sarcasm"; while the ''
Webster's Dictionary
''Webster's Dictionary'' is any of the English language dictionaries edited in the early 19th century by American lexicographer Noah Webster (1758–1843), as well as numerous related or unrelated dictionaries that have adopted the Webster's ...
'' entry is:
Partridge in '' Usage and Abusage'' (1997) would separate the two forms of speech completely:
Irony must not be confused with sarcasm, which is direct: sarcasm means precisely what it says, but in a sharp, caustic, ... manner.
The psychologist Rod A. Martin, in ''The Psychology of Humour'' (2007), is quite clear that irony is where "the literal meaning is opposite to the intended" and sarcasm is "aggressive humor that pokes fun". He has the following examples: for irony he uses the statement "What a nice day" when it is raining. For sarcasm, he cites
Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (30 November 187424 January 1965) was a British statesman, soldier, and writer who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom twice, from 1940 to 1945 during the Second World War, and again from ...
, who is supposed to have said, when told by
Bessie Braddock
Elizabeth Margaret Braddock (née Bamber; 24 September 1899 – 13 November 1970) was a British Labour Party politician who served as Member of Parliament (MP) for the Liverpool Exchange division from 1945 to 1970. She was a ...
that he was drunk, "But I shall be sober in the morning, and you will still be ugly", as being sarcastic, while not saying the opposite of what is intended.
Psychology researchers Lee and Katz have addressed the issue directly. They found that ridicule is an important aspect of sarcasm, but not of verbal irony in general. By this account, sarcasm is a particular kind of personal criticism levelled against a person or group of persons that incorporates verbal irony. For example, a woman reports to her friend that rather than going to a medical doctor to treat her cancer, she has decided to see a spiritual healer instead. In response her friend says sarcastically, "Oh, brilliant, what an ingenious idea, that's really going to cure you." The friend could have also replied with any number of ironic expressions that should not be labeled as sarcasm exactly, but still have many shared elements with sarcasm.
Most instances of verbal irony are labeled by research subjects as sarcastic, suggesting that the term ''sarcasm'' is more widely used than its technical definition suggests it should be. Some
psycholinguistic
Psycholinguistics or psychology of language is the study of the interrelation between linguistic factors and psychological aspects. The discipline is mainly concerned with the mechanisms by which language is processed and represented in the mind ...
theorists suggest that
sarcasm
Sarcasm is the caustic use of words, often in a humorous way, to mock someone or something. Sarcasm may employ ambivalence, although it is not necessarily ironic. Most noticeable in spoken word, sarcasm is mainly distinguished by the inflection ...
,
hyperbole
Hyperbole (; adj. hyperbolic ) is the use of exaggeration as a rhetorical device or figure of speech. In rhetoric, it is also sometimes known as auxesis (literally 'growth'). In poetry and oratory, it emphasizes, evokes strong feelings, and ...
,
understatement
Understatement is an expression of lesser strength than what the speaker or writer actually means or than what is normally expected. It is the opposite of embellishment or exaggeration, and is used for emphasis, irony, hedging, or humor. A partic ...
double entendre
A double entendre (plural double entendres) is a figure of speech or a particular way of wording that is devised to have a double meaning, of which one is typically obvious, whereas the other often conveys a message that would be too socially ...
and jocularity should all be considered forms of verbal irony. The differences between these rhetorical devices ( tropes) can be quite subtle and relate to typical emotional reactions of listeners, and the goals of the speakers. Regardless of the various ways theorists categorize figurative language types, people in conversation who are attempting to interpret speaker intentions and discourse goals do not generally identify the kinds of tropes used.
Echoic allusion
Echoic allusion is the main component involved in conveying verbally ironic meaning. It is best described as a speech act by which the speaker simultaneously represents a thought, belief or idea, and implicitly attributes this idea to someone else who is wrong or deluded. In this way, the speaker intentionally dissociates themselves from the idea and conveys their tacit dissent, thereby providing a different meaning to their utterance. In some cases, the speaker can provide stronger dissociation from the represented thought by also implying derision toward the idea or outwardly making fun of the person or people they attribute it to.
Echoic allusion, like other forms of verbal irony, relies on semantically disambiguating cues to be interpreted correctly. These cues often come in the form of paralinguistic markers such as prosody, tone, or pitch, as well as nonverbal cues like hand gesture, facial expression and eye gaze.
Dramatic irony
Dramatic irony exploits the device of giving the spectator an item of information that at least one of the characters in the narrative is unaware of (at least consciously), thus placing the spectator a step ahead of at least one of the characters.
Connop Thirlwall
Connop Thirlwall (11 January 1797 – 27 July 1875) was an English bishop (in Wales) and historian.
Early life
Thirlwall was born at Stepney, London, to Thomas and Susannah Thirlwall. His father was an Anglican priest who claimed descent from ...
in his 1833 article ''On the Irony of
Sophocles
Sophocles (; grc, Σοφοκλῆς, , Sophoklễs; 497/6 – winter 406/5 BC)Sommerstein (2002), p. 41. is one of three ancient Greek tragedians, at least one of whose plays has survived in full. His first plays were written later than, or c ...
'' originally highlighted the role of irony in drama. ''The Oxford English Dictionary'' defines dramatic irony as:
According to Stanton, dramatic irony has three stages—installation, exploitation, and resolution (often also called preparation, suspension, and resolution)
—producing dramatic conflict in what one character relies or appears to rely upon, the ''contrary'' of which is known by observers (especially the audience; sometimes to other characters within the drama) to be true. In summary, it means that the reader/watcher/listener knows something that one or more of the characters in the piece is not aware of.
For example:
* In '' Macbeth'', upon arriving at Macbeth's castle, Duncan observes, "This castle hath a pleasant seat; the air nimbly and sweetly recommends itself unto our gentle senses." The audience knows that Macbeth and Lady Macbeth have been plotting Duncan's murder.
* In '' City Lights'', the audience knows that Charlie Chaplin's character is not a millionaire, but the blind flower girl (
Virginia Cherrill
Virginia Cherrill (April 12, 1908 – November 14, 1996) was an American actress best known for her role as the blind flower girl in Charlie Chaplin's ''City Lights'' (1931).
Early life
Virginia Cherrill was born on a farm in rural Carthag ...
) believes him to be rich.
* In ''
North by Northwest
''North by Northwest'' is a 1959 American spy thriller film, produced and directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint and James Mason. The screenplay was by Ernest Lehman, who wanted to write "the Hitchcock picture ...
'', the audience knows that Roger Thornhill (
Cary Grant
Cary Grant (born Archibald Alec Leach; January 18, 1904November 29, 1986) was an English-American actor. He was known for his Mid-Atlantic accent, debonair demeanor, light-hearted approach to acting, and sense of comic timing. He was one o ...
) is not Kaplan; Vandamm ( James Mason) and his accomplices do not. The audience also knows that Kaplan is a fictitious agent invented by the CIA; Roger (initially) and Vandamm (throughout) do not.
* In '' Othello'', the audience knows that Desdemona has remained faithful to Othello, but Othello does not. The audience also knows that Iago is scheming to bring about Othello's downfall, a fact hidden from Othello, Desdemona, Cassio, and Roderigo.
* In "
The Cask of Amontillado
"The Cask of Amontillado" (sometimes spelled "The Casque of Amontillado" ) is a short story by American writer Edgar Allan Poe, first published in the November 1846 issue of ''Godey's Lady's Book''. The story, set in an unnamed Italian city at ca ...
", the reader knows that Montresor is planning on murdering Fortunato, while Fortunato believes they are friends.
* In ''
The Truman Show
''The Truman Show'' is a 1998 American psychological satirical comedy-drama film directed by Peter Weir, produced by Scott Rudin, Andrew Niccol, Edward S. Feldman, and Adam Schroeder, and written by Niccol. The film stars Jim Carrey as Tr ...
'', the viewer realizes that Truman is on a television show, but Truman himself only gradually learns this.
* During the
1960 U.S. presidential election
The 1960 United States presidential election was the 44th quadrennial presidential election. It was held on Tuesday, November 8, 1960. In a closely contested election, Democratic United States Senator John F. Kennedy defeated the incumbent Vi ...
, an older woman reportedly teased
John F. Kennedy
John Fitzgerald Kennedy (May 29, 1917 – November 22, 1963), often referred to by his initials JFK and the nickname Jack, was an American politician who served as the 35th president of the United States from 1961 until his assassination ...
at a campaign event for pursuing the presidency despite his relative youth, saying "Young man, it's too soon." Kennedy had been diagnosed with
Addison's disease
Addison's disease, also known as primary adrenal insufficiency, is a rare long-term endocrine disorder characterized by inadequate production of the steroid hormones cortisol and aldosterone by the two outer layers of the cells of the adre ...
in 1947 – with the attending physician estimating that he would not live for another year – in addition to suffering from multiple other chronic medical conditions that required as many as a dozen daily medications by the time of his presidency which were not publicly disclosed (or acknowledged, in the case of the Addison's diagnosis) until after his death. Kennedy responded to the older woman by saying, "No, ma'am. This is my time."
Tragic irony
Tragic irony is a special category of dramatic irony. In tragic irony, the words and actions of the characters contradict the real situation, which the spectators fully realize. ''The Oxford English Dictionary'' defines this as:
Ancient Greek drama
Ancient Greek theatre was a theatrical culture that flourished in ancient Greece from 700 BC. The city-state of Athens, which became a significant cultural, political, and religious place during this period, was its centre, where the theatre was ...
was especially characterized by tragic irony because the audiences were so familiar with the
legend
A legend is a genre of folklore that consists of a narrative featuring human actions, believed or perceived, both by teller and listeners, to have taken place in human history. Narratives in this genre may demonstrate human values, and possess ...
s that most of the plays dramatized.
Sophocles
Sophocles (; grc, Σοφοκλῆς, , Sophoklễs; 497/6 – winter 406/5 BC)Sommerstein (2002), p. 41. is one of three ancient Greek tragedians, at least one of whose plays has survived in full. His first plays were written later than, or c ...
' '' Oedipus Rex'' provides a classic example of tragic irony at its fullest. Claire Colebrook writes:
Further, Oedipus vows to find the murderer and curses him for the plague that he has caused, not knowing that the murderer he has cursed and vowed to find is himself. The audience knows that Oedipus himself is the murderer that he is seeking; Oedipus, Creon, and Jocasta do not.
Irony has some of its foundation in the onlooker's perception of
paradox
A paradox is a logically self-contradictory statement or a statement that runs contrary to one's expectation. It is a statement that, despite apparently valid reasoning from true premises, leads to a seemingly self-contradictory or a logically u ...
that arises from insoluble problems. For example, in the
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's nation ...
play ''Romeo and Juliet'', when Romeo finds Juliet in a drugged, deathlike sleep, he assumes her to be dead. The audience knows that Juliet has faked her death, yet Romeo believes she is truly dead, and commits suicide. Upon awakening to find her dead lover beside her, Juliet stabs herself with a dagger thus killing herself, too.
Situational irony
Situational irony is a relatively modern use of the term, and describes a sharp discrepancy between the expected result and actual results in a certain situation.
Lars Elleström writes:
''Situational irony'' ... is most broadly defined as a situation where the outcome is incongruous with what was expected, but it is also more generally understood as a situation that includes contradictions or sharp contrasts.
For example:
*When John Hinckley attempted to assassinateRonald Reagan, all of his shots initially missed the President; however, a bullet ricocheted off the bullet-proof Presidential limousine and struck Reagan in the chest. Thus, a vehicle made to protect the President from gunfire instead directed gunfire to the president.The Trial of John W. Hinckley, Jr. by Doug Linder. 2001 Retrieved 9 September 2008.Horberry, R., ''Sounds Good on Paper: How to Bring Business Language to Life'', A&C Black, 2010. p. 138 /ref>
*''
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
''The Wonderful Wizard of Oz'' is a children's novel written by author L. Frank Baum and illustrated by W. W. Denslow. It is the first novel in the Oz series of books. A Kansas farm girl named Dorothy ends up in the magical Land of Oz afte ...
'' is a story whose plot revolves around situational irony. Dorothy travels to a wizard and fulfills his challenging demands in order to go home, before discovering she had the ability to go back home all along. The Scarecrow longs for
intelligence
Intelligence has been defined in many ways: the capacity for abstraction, logic, understanding, self-awareness, learning, emotional knowledge, reasoning, planning, creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving. More generally, it can be des ...
, only to discover he is already a
genius
Genius is a characteristic of original and exceptional insight in the performance of some art or endeavor that surpasses expectations, sets new standards for future works, establishes better methods of operation, or remains outside the capabili ...
, and the
Tin Woodman
Nick Chopper, the Tin Woodman, also known as the Tin Man or—mistakenly—the "Tin Woodsman," is a character in the fictional Land of Oz created by American author L. Frank Baum. Baum's Tin Woodman first appeared in his classic 1900 book '' ...
longs to have a heart, only to discover he is already capable of
love
Love encompasses a range of strong and positive emotional and mental states, from the most sublime virtue or good habit, the deepest interpersonal affection, to the simplest pleasure. An example of this range of meanings is that the love o ...
. The Lion, who at first appears to be a whimpering
coward
Cowardice is a trait wherein excessive fear prevents an individual from taking a risk or facing danger. It is the opposite of courage. As a label, "cowardice" indicates a failure of character in the face of a challenge. One who succumbs to cow ...
, turns out to be bold and fearless. The people in
Emerald City
The Emerald City (sometimes called the City of Emeralds) is the capital city of the fictional Land of Oz in L. Frank Baum's Oz books, first described in ''The Wonderful Wizard of Oz'' (1900).
Fictional description
Located in the center of the L ...
believed the Wizard to be a powerful deity, only to discover that he is a bumbling, eccentric old man with no special powers at all.
*In O. Henry's story "
The Gift of the Magi
"The Gift of the Magi" is a short story by O. Henry first published in 1905. The story tells of a young husband and wife and how they deal with the challenge of buying secret Christmas gifts for each other with very little money. As a sentimental ...
", a young couple are too poor to buy each other
Christmas
Christmas is an annual festival commemorating the birth of Jesus Christ, observed primarily on December 25 as a religious and cultural celebration among billions of people around the world. A feast central to the Christian liturgical year ...
gifts. The wife cuts off her treasured hair to sell it to a wig-maker for money to buy her husband a chain for his heirloom pocket watch. She's shocked when she learns he had pawned his watch to buy her a set of combs for her long, beautiful, prized hair. "The double irony lies in the particular way their expectations were foiled."
Cosmic irony
The expression cosmic irony or "irony of fate" stems from the notion that the gods (or the
Fates
The Fates are a common motif in European polytheism, most frequently represented as a trio of goddesses. The Fates shape the destiny of each human, often expressed in textile metaphors such as spinning fibers into yarn, or weaving threads on ...
) are amusing themselves by toying with the minds of mortals with deliberate ironic intent. Closely connected with situational irony, it arises from sharp contrasts between reality and human ideals, or between human intentions and actual results. The resulting situation is poignantly contrary to what was expected or intended.
According to Sudhir Dixit, "Cosmic irony is a term that is usually associated with
homas
In the Vedic Hinduism, a homa (Sanskrit: होम) also known as havan, is a fire ritual performed on special occasions by a Hindu priest usually for a homeowner (" grihastha": one possessing a home). The grihasth keeps different kinds of fire ...
deus ex machina
''Deus ex machina'' ( , ; plural: ''dei ex machina''; English "god out of the machine") is a plot device whereby a seemingly unsolvable problem in a story is suddenly and abruptly resolved by an unexpected and unlikely occurrence. Its function ...
in Hardy's novels." In '' Tess of the d'Urbervilles'' "there are several instances of this type of irony." One example follows:
Historical irony
When history is seen through modern eyes, there often appear sharp contrasts between the way historical figures see their world's future and what actually transpires. For example, during the 1920s ''The New York Times'' repeatedly scorned
crossword puzzles
A crossword is a word puzzle that usually takes the form of a square or a rectangular grid of white- and black-shaded squares. The goal is to fill the white squares with letters, forming words or phrases, by solving clues which lead to the ans ...
. In 1924, it lamented "the sinful waste in the utterly futile finding of words the letters of which will fit into a prearranged pattern." In 1925 it said "the question of whether the puzzles are beneficial or harmful is in no urgent need of an answer. The craze evidently is dying out fast." Today, no U.S. newspaper is more closely identified with the crossword than ''The New York Times.''
In a more tragic example of historical irony, what people now refer to as the "
First World War
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
the war to end war
"The war to end war" (also "The war to end all wars"; originally from the 1914 book '' The War That Will End War'' by H. G. Wells) is a term for the First World War of 1914–1918. Originally an idealistic slogan, it is now mainly used sardonic ...
" and "the war to end all wars", and this became a widespread truism, almost a cliché. Historical irony is therefore a subset of cosmic irony, but one in which the element of time is bound to play a role. Another example could be that of the
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War (also known by other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vietnam a ...
, where in the 1960s the US attempted to stop the
Viet Cong
,
, war = the Vietnam War
, image = FNL Flag.svg
, caption = The flag of the Viet Cong, adopted in 1960, is a variation on the flag of North Vietnam. Sometimes the lower stripe was green.
, active ...
(Viet Minh) taking over South Vietnam. However, it is an often ignored fact that, in 1941, the US originally supported the
Viet Minh
The Việt Minh (; abbreviated from , chữ Nôm and Hán tự: ; french: Ligue pour l'indépendance du Viêt Nam, ) was a national independence coalition formed at Pác Bó by Hồ Chí Minh on 19 May 1941. Also known as the Việt Minh Fro ...
in its fight against Japanese occupation.Neale, Jonathan ''The American War'', p. 17, .
In the introduction to ''The Irony of American History'', Andrew Bacevich writes:
Gunpowder was, according to prevailing academic consensus, discovered in the 9th century by
Chinese alchemists
Chinese can refer to:
* Something related to China
* Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity
**''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation
** List of ethnic groups in China, people of ...
searching for an
elixir of immortality
The elixir of life, also known as elixir of immortality, is a potion that supposedly grants the drinker eternal life and/or eternal youth. This elixir was also said to cure all diseases. Alchemists in various ages and cultures sought the means ...
.Jack Kelly ''Gunpowder: Alchemy, Bombards, and Pyrotechnics: The History of the Explosive that Changed the World'', Perseus Books Group, 2005, , 9780465037223: pp. 2–5 Today it is associated with acts of violence, homicide and war.
Historical irony also includes inventors killed by their own creations, such as William Bullock – unless, due to the nature of the invention, the risk of death was always known and accepted, as in the case of
Otto Lilienthal
Karl Wilhelm Otto Lilienthal (23 May 1848 – 10 August 1896) was a German pioneer of aviation who became known as the "flying man". He was the first person to make well-documented, repeated, successful flights with gliders, therefore making ...
, who was killed by flying a glider of his own devising.
Other prominent examples of outcomes now seen as poignantly contrary to expectation include:
*In the ''
Dred Scott v. Sandford
''Dred Scott v. Sandford'', 60 U.S. (19 How.) 393 (1857), was a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court that held the U.S. Constitution did not extend American citizenship to people of black African descent, enslaved or free; th ...
'' ruling in 1856, the
United States Supreme Court
The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...
held that the Fifth Amendment barred any law that would deprive a slaveholder of his property, such as his slaves, upon the incidence of migration into free territory. So, in a sense, the Supreme Court used the
Bill of Rights
A bill of rights, sometimes called a declaration of rights or a charter of rights, is a list of the most important rights to the citizens of a country. The purpose is to protect those rights against infringement from public officials and pr ...
to deny rights to slaves. Also, Chief Justice Taney hoped that the decision would resolve the slavery issue, but instead it helped cause the
American Civil War
The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), the latter formed by states ...
.
*In the Kalgoorlie (Australia) gold rush of the 1890s, large amounts of the little-known mineral
calaverite
Calaverite, or gold telluride, is an uncommon telluride of gold, a metallic mineral with the chemical formula AuTe2, with approximately 3% of the gold replaced by silver. It was first discovered in Calaveras County, California in 1861, and was ...
(gold telluride) were mistakenly and ironically identified as
fool's gold
The mineral pyrite (), or iron pyrite, also known as fool's gold, is an iron sulfide with the chemical formula Fe S2 (iron (II) disulfide). Pyrite is the most abundant sulfide mineral.
Pyrite's metallic luster and pale brass-yellow hue giv ...
(iron pyrite). These mineral deposits were used as a cheap building material, and for the filling of potholes and ruts. When several years later the mineral was identified as containing real gold, there was a minor gold rush to excavate the streets.
*
John F. Kennedy
John Fitzgerald Kennedy (May 29, 1917 – November 22, 1963), often referred to by his initials JFK and the nickname Jack, was an American politician who served as the 35th president of the United States from 1961 until his assassination ...
's last conversation was ironic in light of events which followed seconds later. Seated in the middle row of the presidential limousine in
Dallas
Dallas () is the List of municipalities in Texas, third largest city in Texas and the largest city in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, the List of metropolitan statistical areas, fourth-largest metropolitan area in the United States at 7.5 ...
Nellie Connally
Idanell Brill Connally (February 24, 1919 – September 1, 2006) was the First Lady of Texas from 1963 to 1969. She was the wife of John Connally, who served as Governor of Texas and later as Secretary of the Treasury.
She and her husband we ...
reportedly commented, "Mr. President, you can't say that Dallas doesn't love you." Kennedy replied, "That's very obvious." Immediately after, he was mortally wounded.
*In 1974, the US Consumer Product Safety Commission had to recall 80,000 of its own lapel buttons promoting "toy safety", because the buttons had sharp edges, used lead paint, and had small clips that could be broken off and subsequently swallowed.
*Introducing cane toads to Australia to control the cane beetle not only failed to control the pest, but introduced, in the toads themselves, a much worse pest.
Use
Comic irony
Irony is often used in literature to produce a comic effect. This may also be combined with
satire
Satire is a genre of the visual, literary, and performing arts, usually in the form of fiction and less frequently non-fiction, in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, often with the intent of shaming ...
. For instance, an author may facetiously state something as a well-known fact and then demonstrate through the narrative that the fact is untrue.
Jane Austen's '' Pride and Prejudice'' begins with the proposition "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife." In fact, it soon becomes clear that Austen means the opposite: women (or their mothers) are always in search of, and desperately on the lookout for, a rich single man to make a husband. The irony deepens as the story promotes this romance and ends in a double marriage proposal. "Austen's comic irony emerges out of the disjunction between Elizabeth's overconfidence (or pride) in her perceptions of Darcy and the narrator's indications that her views are in fact partial and prejudicial."
''
The Third Man
''The Third Man'' is a 1949 British film noir directed by Carol Reed, written by Graham Greene and starring Joseph Cotten, Alida Valli, Orson Welles, and Trevor Howard. Set in postwar Vienna, the film centres on American Holly Martins (Cotten ...
'' is a film that features any number of eccentricities, each of which contributes to the film's perspective of comic irony as well as its overall cinematic self-consciousness."
Writing about performances of Shakespeare's '' Othello'' in apartheid South Africa, Robert Gordon suggests: "Could it be that black people in the audience ... may have viewed as a comic irony his audacity and naïvety in thinking he could pass for white."
Romantic irony and metafiction
Romantic irony is "an attitude of detached scepticism adopted by an author towards his or her work, typically manifesting in literary self-consciousness and self-reflection". This conception of irony originated with the German Romantic writer and critic
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich (after 1814: von) Schlegel (; ; 10 March 1772 – 12 January 1829) was a German poet, literary critic, philosopher, philologist, and Indologist. With his older brother, August Wilhelm Schlegel, he was one of the main figure ...
.
Joseph Dane writes "From a twentieth-century perspective, the most crucial area in the history of irony is that described by the term romantic irony." He discusses the difficulty of defining romantic irony: "But what is romantic irony? A universal type of irony? The irony used by romantics? or an irony envisioned by the romantics and romanticists?" He also describes the arguments for and against its use.
Referring to earlier self-conscious works such as ''
Don Quixote
is a Spanish epic novel by Miguel de Cervantes. Originally published in two parts, in 1605 and 1615, its full title is ''The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha'' or, in Spanish, (changing in Part 2 to ). A founding work of West ...
'' and ''
Tristram Shandy Tristram may refer to:
Literature
* the title character of ''The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman'', a novel by Laurence Sterne
* the title character of '' Tristram of Lyonesse'', an epic poem by Algernon Charles Swinburne
*"Tristr ...
'', Douglas Muecke points particularly to
Peter Weiss
Peter Ulrich Weiss (8 November 1916 – 10 May 1982) was a German writer, painter, graphic artist, and experimental filmmaker of adopted Swedish nationality. He is particularly known for his plays ''Marat/Sade'' and ''The Investigation'' and hi ...
's 1964 play, ''
Marat/Sade
''The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade'' (german: Die Verfolgung und Ermordung Jean Paul Marats dargestellt durch die Schauspielgrupp ...
''. This work is a play within a play set in a lunatic asylum, in which it is difficult to tell whether the players are speaking only to other players or also directly to the audience. When The Herald says, "The regrettable incident you've just seen was unavoidable indeed foreseen by our playwright", there is confusion as to who is being addressed, the "audience" on the stage or the audience in the theatre. Also, since the play within the play is performed by the inmates of a lunatic asylum, the theatre audience cannot tell whether the paranoia displayed before them is that of the players, or the people they are portraying. Muecke notes that, "in America, Romantic irony has had a bad press", while "in England tis almost unknown."
However, in a book entitled ''English Romantic Irony'', Anne Mellor writes, referring to Byron, Keats, Carlyle, Coleridge, and Lewis Carroll:
Similarly, metafiction is: "Fiction in which the author self-consciously alludes to the artificiality or literariness of a work by parodying or departing from novelistic conventions (esp. naturalism) and narrative techniques." It is a type of fiction that self-consciously addresses the devices of fiction, thereby exposing the fictional illusion.
Gesa Giesing writes that "the most common form of metafiction is particularly frequent in Romantic literature. The phenomenon is then referred to as Romantic Irony." Giesing notes that "There has obviously been an increased interest in metafiction again after World War II."
For example, Patricia Waugh quotes from several works at the top of her chapter headed "What is metafiction?". These include:
Additionally, ''The Cambridge Introduction to Postmodern Fiction'' refers to
John Fowles
John Robert Fowles (; 31 March 1926 – 5 November 2005) was an English novelist of international renown, critically positioned between modernism and postmodernism. His work was influenced by Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus, among others.
Aft ...
's ''
The French Lieutenant's Woman
''The French Lieutenant's Woman'' is a 1969 postmodern historical fiction novel by John Fowles. The plot explores the fraught relationship of gentleman and amateur naturalist Charles Smithson and Sarah Woodruff, the former governess and indep ...
'':
Socratic irony
Socratic irony is "the dissimulation of ignorance practised by
Socrates
Socrates (; ; –399 BC) was a Greek philosopher from Athens who is credited as the founder of Western philosophy and among the first moral philosophers of the ethical tradition of thought. An enigmatic figure, Socrates authored no te ...
as a means of confuting an adversary". Socrates would pretend to be ignorant of the topic under discussion, to draw out the inherent nonsense in the arguments of his interlocutors. ''
The Chambers Dictionary
The ''Chambers Dictionary'' (''TCD'') was first published by William and Robert Chambers as ''Chambers's English Dictionary'' in 1872. It was an expanded version of ''Chambers's Etymological Dictionary'' of 1867, compiled by James Donald. A sec ...
'' defines it as "a means by which a questioner pretends to know less than a respondent, when actually he knows more".
Zoe Williams of ''The Guardian'' wrote: "The technique f Socratic irony demonstrated in the Platonic dialogues, was to pretend ignorance and, more sneakily, to feign credence in your opponent's power of thought, in order to tie him in knots."
A more modern example of Socratic irony can be seen on the American crime fiction television series, '' Columbo''. The character Lt. Columbo is seemingly naïve and incompetent. His untidy appearance adds to this fumbling illusion. As a result, he is underestimated by the suspects in murder cases he is investigating. With their guard down and their false sense of confidence, Lt. Columbo is able to solve the cases, leaving the murderers feeling duped and outwitted. Like Socrates, Columbo routinely encourages the suspect to explain the situation, follows their logic aloud for himself, then arrives at a contradiction. He then insists he is confused and asks the suspect to help him understand, with the suspect's subsequent attempt to amend the contradiction revealing further evidence or contradictions.
Irony as infinite, absolute negativity
Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, and others, saw irony, such as that used by Socrates, as a disruptive force with the power to undo texts and readers alike. The phrase itself is taken from Hegel's '' Lectures on Aesthetics'', and is applied by Kierkegaard to the irony of Socrates. This tradition includes 19th-century German critic and novelist
Friedrich Schlegel
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich (after 1814: von) Schlegel (; ; 10 March 1772 – 12 January 1829) was a German poet, literary critic, philosopher, philologist, and Indologist. With his older brother, August Wilhelm Schlegel, he was one of the main figure ...
("On Incomprehensibility"),
Charles Baudelaire
Charles Pierre Baudelaire (, ; ; 9 April 1821 – 31 August 1867) was a French poet who also produced notable work as an essayist and art critic. His poems exhibit mastery in the handling of rhyme and rhythm, contain an exoticism inherited ...
On the Concept of Irony with Continual Reference to Socrates
''On the Concept of Irony with Continual Reference to Socrates'' ( da, Om Begrebet Ironi med stadigt Hensyn til Socrates) is Søren Kierkegaard's 1841 master's thesis under . This thesis is the culmination of three years of extensive study on So ...
:
ocraticirony sthe infinite absolute negativity. It is negativity, because it only negates; it is infinite, because it does not negate this or that phenomenon; it is absolute, because that by virtue of which it negates is a higher something that still is not. The irony established nothing, because that which is to be established lies behind it...
Where much of philosophy attempts to reconcile opposites into a larger positive project, Kierkegaard and others insist that irony—whether expressed in complex games of authorship or simple
litotes
In rhetoric, litotes (, or ), also known classically as ''antenantiosis'' or ''moderatour'', is a figure of speech and form of verbal irony in which understatement is used to emphasize a point by stating a negative to further affirm a positive, o ...
—must, in Kierkegaard's words, "swallow its own stomach". Irony entails endless reflection and violent reversals, and ensures incomprehensibility at the moment it compels speech. Similarly, among other literary critics, writer
David Foster Wallace
David Foster Wallace (February 21, 1962 – September 12, 2008) was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and university professor of English and creative writing. Wallace is widely known for his 1996 novel '' Infinite Jest'', whi ...
viewed the pervasiveness of ironic and other postmodern tropes as the cause of "great despair and stasis in U.S. culture, and that for aspiring fictionists roniespose terrifically vexing problems".
Awkwardness
The 1990s saw a cultural expansion of the definition of irony from "saying what one doesn't mean" into a "general stance of detachment from life in general", this detachment serving as a shield against the awkwardness of everyday life.
The generation of people in the United States who grew up in the 1990s, Millennials, are seen as having this same sort of detachment from serious or awkward situations in life, as well. Hipsters are thought to use irony as a shield against those same serious or genuine confrontations.
Opposition between perception and concept
Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer ( , ; 22 February 1788 – 21 September 1860) was a German philosopher. He is best known for his 1818 work '' The World as Will and Representation'' (expanded in 1844), which characterizes the phenomenal world as the pr ...
, in ''
The World as Will and Representation
''The World as Will and Representation'' (''WWR''; german: Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, ''WWV''), sometimes translated as ''The World as Will and Idea'', is the central work of the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer. The first editio ...
'', Volume 2, Chapter 8, claimed that the complete and total opposition between what is thought and what is seen constitutes irony. He wrote: "... if with deliberate intention something real and perceptible is brought directly under the concept of its opposite, the result is plain, common irony. For example, if during heavy rain we say: 'It is pleasant weather today'; or, of an ugly bride it is said: 'He has found himself a lovely treasure'; or of a rogue: 'This man of honor,' and so on. Only children and people without any education will laugh at anything of this kind; for here the incongruity between the conceived and the perceived is total."
Misuse
Some speakers of English complain that the words ''irony'' and ''ironic'' are often misused, though the more general casual usage of a contradiction between circumstance and expectation originated in the 1640s.
Dan Shaughnessy
Dan Shaughnessy (born July 20, 1953) is an American sports writer. He has covered the Boston Red Sox for ''The Boston Globe'' since 1981. In 2016, he was given the J. G. Taylor Spink Award by the Baseball Hall of Fame. Shaughnessy is often refe ...
wrote:
We were always kidding about the use of irony. I maintained that it was best never to use the word because it was too often substituted for coincidence. (Alanis Morissette's song "Ironic" cites multiple examples of things that are patently not ironic.)
Tim Conley cites the following:
"Philip Howard assembled a list of seven implied meanings for the word "ironically", as it opens a sentence:
* By a tragic coincidence
* By an exceptional coincidence
* By a curious coincidence
* By a coincidence of no importance
* You and I know, of course, though other less intelligent mortals walk benighted under the midday sun
* Oddly enough, or it's a rum thing that
* Oh hell! I've run out of words to start a sentence with."
Punctuation
No agreed-upon method for indicating irony in written text exists, though many ideas have been suggested. For instance, an irony punctuation mark was proposed in the 1580s, when Henry Denham introduced a rhetorical question mark or percontation point, which resembles a reversed question mark. This mark was also advocated by the French poet Marcel Bernhardt at the end of the 19th century, to indicate irony or
sarcasm
Sarcasm is the caustic use of words, often in a humorous way, to mock someone or something. Sarcasm may employ ambivalence, although it is not necessarily ironic. Most noticeable in spoken word, sarcasm is mainly distinguished by the inflection ...
. French writer
Hervé Bazin
Hervé Bazin (; 17 April 191117 February 1996) was a French writer, whose best-known novels covered semi-autobiographical topics of teenage rebellion and dysfunctional families.
Biography
Bazin, born Jean-Pierre Hervé-Bazin in Angers, Maine- ...
suggested another ''pointe d'ironie'': the Greek letter ''
psi
Psi, PSI or Ψ may refer to:
Alphabetic letters
* Psi (Greek) (Ψ, ψ), the 23rd letter of the Greek alphabet
* Psi (Cyrillic) (Ѱ, ѱ), letter of the early Cyrillic alphabet, adopted from Greek
Arts and entertainment
* "Psi" as an abbreviatio ...
'' with a dot below it, while
Tom Driberg
Thomas Edward Neil Driberg, Baron Bradwell (22 May 1905 – 12 August 1976) was a British journalist, politician, High Anglican churchman and possible Soviet spy, who served as a Member of Parliament (MP) from 1942 to 1955, and again from 195 ...
Accismus
Accismus is a feigned refusal of something earnestly desired.''Garner's Modern American Usage''p. 877/ref>
The 1823 ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' writes that accismus may sometimes be considered a virtue, sometimes a vice.
*
Apophasis
Apophasis (; , ) is a rhetorical device wherein the speaker or writer brings up a subject by either denying it, or denying that it should be brought up. Accordingly, it can be seen as a rhetorical relative of irony.
The device is also called p ...
*
Auto-antonym
An auto-antonym or autantonym, also called a contronym or antagonym among other terms, is a word with multiple meanings ( senses) of which one is the reverse of another. For example, the word '' cleave'' can mean "to cut apart" or "to bind togeth ...
*
Double standard
A double standard is the application of different sets of principles for situations that are, in principle, the same. It is often used to describe treatment whereby one group is given more latitude than another. A double standard arises when two ...
Meta-communication Meta-communication is a secondary communication (including indirect cues) about how a piece of information is meant to be interpreted. It is based on the idea that the same message accompanied by different meta-communication can mean something entir ...
Paradox
A paradox is a logically self-contradictory statement or a statement that runs contrary to one's expectation. It is a statement that, despite apparently valid reasoning from true premises, leads to a seemingly self-contradictory or a logically u ...
*
Post-irony
Post-irony (from Latin ''post'' (after) and Ancient Greek ', meaning dissimulation (or feigned ignorance)) is a term used to denote a state in which earnest and ironic intents become muddled. It may less commonly refer to its converse: a return fr ...
References
Bibliography
*Bogel, Fredric V. "Irony, Inference, and Critical Understanding." ''Yale Review'', 503–19.
*Booth, Wayne C. ''A Rhetoric of Irony''. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975.
*Bryant, G. A., & Fox Tree, J. E. (2002). Recognizing verbal irony in spontaneous speech. ''Metaphor and Symbol, 17'', 99–115.
* Colebrook, Claire. ''Irony''. London and New York: Routledge, 2004.
*Gibbs, R. W. (2000). Irony in talk among friends. ''Metaphor and Symbol, 15'', 5–27.
*Hutcheon, Linda. ''Irony's Edge: The Theory and Politics of Irony''. London: Routledge, 1994.
*Kierkegaard, Søren. ''On the Concept of Irony with Continual Reference to Socrates''. 1841; Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992.
*Lavandier, Yves. '' Writing Drama'', pages 263–315.
*Lee, C. J., & Katz, A. N. (1998). The differential role of ridicule in sarcasm and irony. ''Metaphor and Symbol, 13'', 1–15.
*Leggitt, J., & Gibbs, R. W. (2000). Emotional reactions to verbal irony. ''Discourse Processes, 29''(1), 1–24.
*Muecke, D. C. ''The Compass of Irony''. London: Methuen, 1969.
*Star, William T. "Irony and Satire: A Bibliography." Irony and Satire in French Literature. Ed. University of South Carolina Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina College of Humanities and Social Sciences, 1987. 183–209.
External links
The final irony —a '' Guardian'' article about irony, use and misuse of the term Article on the etymology of Irony "Irony", by Norman D. Knox in ''Dictionary of the History of Ideas'' (1973)
Sardonicus —a web-resource that provides access to similes, ironic and otherwise, harvested from the web. '' Writing Drama'' has a 52-page chapter on dramatic irony (with insights on the three phases (installation-exploitation-resolution), surprise, mystery, suspense, diffuse dramatic irony, etc.) "American Irony" compared with British irony, quoting
Stephen Fry
Stephen John Fry (born 24 August 1957) is an English actor, broadcaster, comedian, director and writer. He first came to prominence in the 1980s as one half of the comic double act Fry and Laurie, alongside Hugh Laurie, with the two starring ...
Simon Pegg
Simon John Pegg (né Beckingham; born 14 February 1970) is an English actor, comedian, screenwriter, and producer. He came to prominence in the UK as the co-creator of the Channel 4 sitcom ''Spaced'' (1999–2001), directed by Edgar Wright. H ...