What is irony in literature?
Irony is a literary device or event in which how things seem to be is in fact very different from how they actually are. If this seems like a loose definition, don’t worry—it is. Irony is a broad term that encompasses three different types of irony, each with their own specific definition: verbal irony, dramatic irony, and situational irony.
What is verbal irony?
In dialogue, verbal irony can display one character’s sparkling wit, and another character’s thickheadedness. Verbal irony can also create a connection between people who get the irony, excluding those who don’t.
What is ironic understatement and overstatement?
Understatement and overstatement can also be ironic. Irony is a characteristic stylistic feature of postmodernism. See also dramatic irony.
What is the meaning of Sullivan’s irony?
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 ‘s secondary meaning for irony: “incongruity between what might be expected and what actually occurs”.
What is situational irony?
Situational irony involves a striking reversal of what is expected or intended: a person sidesteps a pothole to avoid injury and in doing so steps into another pothole and injures themselves.
What is sarcasm in the form of irony?
It can sometimes take the form of verbal irony. For instance, if you were to say to someone who had just cut you in line, “What a polite, civilized person you are!” that would be sarcasm in the form of irony, since your meaning is the opposite of the literal meaning of your words.
What is the meaning of tragic irony?
2 : a situation that is strange or funny because things happen in a way that seems to be the opposite of what you expected It was a tragic irony that he made himself sick by worrying so much about his health. The (awful/bitter) irony is that in trying to forget her, he thought of her even more.
What is irony according to Henry Watson Fowler?
Henry Watson Fowler, in The King’s English, 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.”
What is irony according to Schopenhauer?
Schopenhauer, in The World as Will and Representation, 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.
What are the two levels of irony?
“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.
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