Irony

1. Irony Is the broadest class of FIGURES OF THOUGHT that depend on presenting a deliberate contrast between two levels of meaning. The word derives from a type of character in Greek drama, the eiron, who pretended to be stupid and unaware. He used the pretense to deceive and triumph over another stock character, the alazon, who was truly stupid, but boastful and complacent. The major types of irony are VERBAL, SITUATIONAL, STRUCTURAL, DRAMATIC, TRAGIC and COSMIC.

2. Verbal Irony • Consists of implying a meaning different from, and often the complete opposite of, the one that is explicitly stated. Usually, the irony is signaled by clues in the context of the situation or in the style of expression. In complex cases, the detection of irony may depend on values that the author assumes are shared by his or her audience. Be careful, as verbal irony requires subtle reading and comprehension and is always in danger of being misconstrued, and thereby shocking or offending a naïve audience. (Hamilton 44). • Irony Video Civil Disservice w/Jon Stewart

3. Sarcasm • The taunting use of apparent approval or praise for actual disapproval or dispraise, is mistakenly used as synonymous with verbal irony. The distinctions are that sarcasm is simpler and more crude; in dialogue, it is often signaled by vocal inflection. For example, someone might react to the news that the car is out of gas with the sarcastic retort, “Great! Just what we needed.” In another example, Amanda Wingfield, the controlling mother in Tennessee Williams’s play The Glass Menagerie, demands to know of her adult son where he has been going at night. Tom, an aspiring writer who feels trapped by having to work in a warehouse to support his mother and sister, has been escaping to bars and movies in his free time. When Amanda calls his explanation that goes to the movies “a lie,” Tom reacts with bitter sarcasm: • I’m going to opium dens, dens of vice and criminals’ hangouts, Mother. I’ve joined the Hogan Gang, I’m a hired assassin, I carry a tommy gun in a violin case! . . . They call me Killer, Killer Wingfield, I’m leading a double-life, a simple, honest warehouse worker by day, by night a dynamic czar of the underworld, Mother. • Tom’s sarcasm is signaled by the exaggerated details, cliches of B-movie gangster plots, which mock Amanda’s groundless charges, and by the italicized words that emphasize his frustration and outrage. (Hamilton 44-45)

4. Sarcasm • My friend Devon is always extremely sarcastic whenever he talks to me and this was one of our conversations.

5. Structural Irony • Refers to an implication of alternate or reversed meaning that pervades a work. A major technique for sustaining structural irony is the use of a naïve protagonist or an unreliable narrator who continually interprets events and intentions in ways that the author signals are mistaken. For example, Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain’s boy narrator, believes at first that the rascally King and Duke are the brave and erudite noblemen they claim to be, despite signs of their shady past and specious learning. Other narrators may be unreliable not because they are gullible but because they are mentally incapacitated. The narrator of Edgar Allen Poe’s short story “The Tell-Tale Heart” is paranoid and hallucinatory. (Hamilton 45). • Another means of creating structural irony is to relate the same events from the perspectives of different narrators. (Hamilton 45) • An example, Everybody Loves Raymond, Deborah and Ray are continuously fighting over items that are not important or insignificant yet whenever they interpret their argument to the audience both have different versions of what the argument actually entails. • Example from a Twix Commercial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8eR4mDKH_c

6. Structural Irony The story of how my parents first met. My dad told me he was really cool and smooth with my mom however my mom told me he was really awkward when they first met. This is structural irony because my parents gave 2 different sides to the same event.

8. Dramatic Irony • Occurs when the audience is privy to knowledge that one or more of the characters lacks. The technique can be used in for comic or tragic effects. In Homer’s Odyssey, the long-absent Odysseus’s disguised as a beggar provides poignant dramatic irony as he encounters various beloved family members and hated rivals but, for the sake of his intended revenge, must refrain from revealing his true identity. Again, the audience is flattered by being allowed to share in the omniscient point of view often reserved for the author. (Hamilton 46).

9. Surprise!

10. Dramatic Irony Band director said we get water breaks every 10 minutes on the news All of the band kids know that we don’t get water even close to every 10 minutes Ben Hergert

11. Tragic Irony • When dramatic irony occurs in tragedies, it is called tragic irony. The audience knows from the opening scene of Othello, for example, that the malevolent Iago is plotting his demise of the noble general who he pretends to serve faithfully, and that his epithet, “honest Iago,” is entirely ironic. • In Romeo and Juliet, we watch in helpless dismay as the rash Mercutio wholly misconstrues his friend Romeo’s motives for refusing to respond to Tybalt’s challenge. Unlike Mercutio, we know that Romeo is secretly married to Juliet, the daughter of his family’s enemy. Rather than demurring out of fear, he is trying to appease the insolent Tybalt’s challenge, who has just become his cousin by marriage. Mercutio takes Romeo’s courtesy for cowardice, steps in the fray, and inadvertently triggers the series of deaths that devastate both families (Hamilton 46).

13. Cosmic Irony • Refers to an implied worldview in which characters are led to embrace false hopes of aid or success, only to be defeated by some larger force, such as God or fate. For instance, MacBeth believes that he is protected by the weird sisters’ prophecies, but he is betrayed by their fiendish duplicity, and Arthur Miller’s Willy Loman kills himself to secure his family the insurance payment that his suicide will, in fact, make invalid. Shakespeare’s King Lear, is a tour de force cosmic irony, in which several characters congratulate themselves on a triumph or a narrow escape, only to be destroyed shortly afterward. (Hamilton 46)

14. Cosmic Irony During Dawson’s Beauty and the Beast, Mr. Weber came over to check to make sure everything was in line for a perfect show. He was skeptical of my note system. I told him, “I got this, and we’ll all do perfectly tonight and the show will go perfectly.” The fire alarm went off about 3 minutes into Act II. Man Plans; God/Fate laughs. Elizabeth Asonye

15. Cosmic Irony • I was carrying 4 cups full of juice to the dinner table and my brother said “Don’t spill the juice” when two minutes later he walked by the kitchen knocking down a bowl of peanuts. Karun Salvady

16. Understatement • Is a form of IRONY in which a point is deliberately expressed as less, in magnitude, value, or importance, that it actually is. • For example, in Romeo and Juliet, Mercutio dismisses the fatal wound he has just received as “a scratch.” • Monty Python’s: Holy Grail: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmInkxbvlCs You cannot use this film clip!

17. Understatement My mom said, “The cream cheese is only a few days old, it should still be good”. This is what it looked like. The expiration date was a month earlier. Taylor Laurence, class of 2014

18. Understatement This picture was taken in the choir room office, where I overheard someone say, “That A-lookin’ thing is really tall”. This is an understatement because the Eiffel Tower is one of the tallest, most recognized structures in the world.

19. Free Verse • Free verse poem's are poem's that do not have rules, they do not rhyme and does not have a meter. The poet makes up the rules for the poem as the poem is progressing or thoughts are being completed. • http://www.life123.com/parenting/education/grammar/Free-Verse-Poem-Definition

20. Free Verse This Poem is free from restrictions Yet it isn’t It must follow- Certain boundaries Boundaries to prevent this poem from Becoming an awful, colorful rant These limitations are there To make sure that my grade Is not turned into an F I could even list my grocery list On here-just for funsies As long as I don’t curse -Coffee -Honey -Basil -Cream Cheese -Blueberries -Vanilla Ice Cream -Granola Cereal -Mint Leaves -Apple Soda -Shredded cheese -milk Jean Bautista

21. Narrator • A narrator can establish irony based on diction, tone, sarcasm, loose structure in a sentence, shift from one point of view to another, and a string of uncoordinated clauses in a passage (Hamilton 116, 176, 187). • For example, Forrest Gump movie: • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvKzyYy6qvY

22. Pathetic Fallacy • Pathetic fallacy is a type of PERSONIFICATION, in which inanimate aspects of nature, such as the landscape or the weather, are represented as having human qualities or feelings. The term, which was invented by the Victorian critic John Ruskin, derives from the logical absurdity (“fallacy”) of supposing that nature can sympathize with (feel pathos for) human moods and concerns. • Usually the pathetic fallacy reflects or foreshadows some aspect of the poem or narrative at that point, such as the plot, theme, or characterization, and so intensifies the tone. • At times, writers reverse the usual use of the pathetic fallacy for purposes of IRONY. (Hamilton 40)

23. Pathetic Fallacy In the play Macbeth, Shakespeare uses pathetic fallacies to describe the murder of Duncan. The “unruly” night, the “screams of death” in the air, and the “feverous” earth depict the “evil” act of murder that occurred.

24. Situational Irony • takes place when there is a discrepancy betweenwhat is expected to happen, or what would be appropriate to happen, and what really does happen. • Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vt0B0bZVM8

25. Allusion • (al-LOO-zyun, from the Latin word for “to play with”) is a passing reference in a work of literature to another literary or historical work, figure, or event, or to a literary passage. The reference is explained, so that is can convey the flattering presumption that the reader shares the writer’s erudition or inside knowledge. • For example, Andrea Lee’s novel Sarah Phillips (1984), the narrator describes her Harvard roommate, a chemistry major and “avid lacrosse player” who “adored fresh air and loathed reticence and ambiguity,” as having the following surprising predilection: “Margaret, the scientist, had . . . A positively Brontἔesque conception of the ideal man.” The allusion is to the dark, brooding, enigmatic heroes in the works of Charlotte and Emily Brontἔ, especially Mr. Rochester in Jane Eyre and Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights. Only a reader who recognizes the allusion would appreciate the IRONY of the frank, forthright Margaret’s preference for men who are far from being either frank or forthright. • Hamilton, S. Essential Literary Terms With Exercises. New York: People’s Education, 2007. • First proposal to Elizabeth Bennett: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=poE3UXlQ6eU • Scene from Pride and Prejudice: Darcy’s Proposal https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1WCHVq9Vqc

26. AntithesisSpecial Type of Irony • A contrasting of ideas made sharp by the use of words of opposite meaning in contiguous clauses or phrases (next to one another) with grammatically parallel structure. • Aristotle praised antithesis in his Rhetoric “…because…it is by putting opposing conclusions side by side that you refute one of them.” • Example: “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country (John F. Kennedy). • Example: “Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike” (Pope). • Example: “Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasure” (Samuel Johnson).

27. HyperboleSpecial Type of Irony • A great exaggeration. • Example: She wept oceans of tears.

28. OxymoronSpecial Type of Irony • A paradoxical utterance that combines two terms that in ordinary usage are contraries, especially frequent in Petrarchan and Elizabethan love poetry (1590’s). Also found in devotional prose or religious poetry as a way of expressing the Christian mysteries. • Example: “Pleasing pains”; “loving hate”; “I burn and freeze” (Petrarchan and Elizabethan love poetry).

29. ParadoxSpecial Type of Irony • A statement which seems untrue but proves valid upon close inspection. • Example: “When my love swears that she is made of truth / I do believe her, though I know that she lies” (Shakespeare, Sonnet 138). • Example: “I was much older then; I’m younger than that now” (Bob Dylan). • Example: “Dark with excessive bright thy skirts appear” (Milton, Paradise Lost).

30. Biblical Allusion • Is a very quick or indirect reference to something in the Bible, such as a particular scripture, character or story. • Examples could include comparing a modern to somewhere in the Bible, like the Garden of Eden or Sodom and Gomorrah, or comparing a person to the Good Samaritan • Hamilton, S. Essential Literary Terms With Exercises. New York: People’s Education, 2007. • AP Student trying to identify Biblical Allusions in Harry Potter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8ayCrBzewo • Good explanation on identifying Biblical allusions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oggODgb9K2U and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfVSikoglw4&pbjreload=10

31. Hint for the School Year • Know the background on • Adam and Eve • Cain and Able • Satan and Garden of Eden • Paul (New Testament) • Apostles (New Testament) • Holy Trinity • The Plagues (Old Testament) • The Ten Commandments (Old Testament) • Sodom and Gomorrah (Old Testament) • Woman at the Well (New Testament) • Creation (Old Testament) • Giants (Old Testament) • Tree of Knowledge (Old Testament) • Crucifix or Crucifixion (New Testament)

32. Coincidence (Not Irony) • co‧in‧ci‧dence A sequence of events that, although accidental, seems to have been planned or arranged. • i‧ro‧ny Incongruity between what might be expected and what actually occurs. • Source: http://dragreduction.blogspot.com/2005/11/irony-vs-coincidence.html

33. Texas Tech UniversityLubbock, Texas June 20th / August 16th