IRONY

1
IRONY

• by Don L. F. Nilsen
• and Alleen Pace Nilsen

2
Irony A Definition
3
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

• 1. Explain eiron and irony (3)
• 2. What is dramatic irony? (5)
• 3. Who is Chauncy Gardner? (7)
• 4. Explain the irony of Being There, Don
  Juan, The Gift of the Magi, Mark Anthonys
  Speech, A Modest Proposal, The Rape of the
  Lock, Screwtape Letters, The Tell-Tale
  Heart, and The War Prayer.
• 5. Contrast linguistic and situational irony (11)
• 6. Contrast irony (gallows humor) and satire
  (10).
• 7. What is socratic irony (13)?
• 8. Contrast stable irony and observable irony
  (14).
• 9. Explain tragic irony (15).

4
GREEK EIRON

• The word irony is related to the Greek eiron
  meaning dissembler in speech.
• In modern usage it commonly refers to speech
  incidents in which the intended meaning of the
  words is contrary to their literal interpretation
  or to the expected meaning.
• In conversations, people are often aware that
  they are being ironic when, for example, they
  want to change the subject and they begin with,
  Not to change the subject, but.
• Similarly, a speaker who wants to emphasize a
  point he is making starts with fake humility
  Far be it from me to say, but ..
• Someone with an unproven argument might begin
  with, Clearly , or As is well
  known. (Nilsen Nilsen Encyclopedia 168)

5
JOHNNY CARSON

• Johnny Carson kept a toilet company from using
  the Heres Johnny as a trademark.
• They had the slogan, The Worlds Foremost
  Commodian.
• The judge decided in favor of Carson not because
  of an invasion of privacy, or because of a
  demeaning of the plaintiffs reputation, but
  because the Heres Johnny toilets might be
  confused with the Heres Johnny clothing and
  restaurants.
• (Nilsen Nilsen 190)

6
DRAMATIC IRONY

• Dramatic irony occurs when the audience members
  know things that the characters do not know.

7

• In George Bernard Shaws Major Barbara,
  Unterschaft asks Bilton, the foreman, if anything
  is wrong, and Bilton responds that a gentleman
  walked into the shed and lit a cigarette, sir
  thats all.
• The stage directions are that Bilton is to say
  this with ironic calm.
• The irony is obvious only when the audience
  learns that the shed is filled with high
  explosives.
• (Nilsen Nilsen Encyclopedia 169)

8

• Jerzy Kosinskis novel and the movie Being There.
  is about a mentally disabled gardener named
  Chauncey Gardner.
• Those around him treat him as though he is a sage
  and a great visionary. They supply grandiose
  metaphorical meanings for what are the simple and
  sometimes inane observations of an ordinary
  gardener. (Nilsen Nilsen Encyclopedia 169)

9
HISTORY OF IRONY

• The period in literary history in which irony was
  most developed was the Age of the Enlightenment,
  the time of Voltaire, Hume, Pope, Dryden, Swift,
  Addison, Steele, and Diderot
• However, irony has been included in literature
  throughout history. In Chaucers 14th-century
  Canterbury Tales, an unhappily married merchant
  grandly praises marriage.

10

• In William Shakespeares 16th-century Julius
  Caesar, Marc Antonys extravagant praise of
  Caesar is ironic.
• Jonathan Swifts 18th-century Modest Proposal
  that the English begin eating Irish babies was in
  no sense modest.
• An additional irony is that some of Swifts
  opponents read his ironic proposal as legitimate
  rather than ironic and attempted to have Swift
  committed as mentally ill.
• (Nilsen Nilsen Encyclopedia 169)

11
IRONY VS. SATIRE

• Critic Northrop Frye makes a distinction between
  satire and irony. He says that satire is a
  criticism of society with a clear understanding
  in the authors mind of what society should be
  like, but is not.
• The author of a satire hopes to persuade readers
  to work for the authors vision as does C.S.
  Lewis in his Screwtape Letters.
• Those who create gallows humor and irony do not
  intend to point their readers in a particular
  direction, but instead to leave them in doubt.
• As Frye says, Whenever a reader is not sure what
  the authors attitude is or what his own is
  supposed to be, we have irony with relatively
  little satire (Frye 131-239).

12
LINGUISTIC VS. SITUATIONAL IRONY

• Many modern critics make only the two-way
  distinction between linguistic and situational
  irony.
• Linguistic irony requires a sender and a
  receiver, while situational irony requires only
  an observer with a clever mind as when Lily
  Tomlin buys a waste basket.
• The clerk puts it into a paper sack so she can
  take it home, and the first thing Tomlin does
  when she gets home is to put the paper sack into
  the waste basket.
• Derek Evans and Dave Fulwilers Whos Nobody in
  America is filled with such ironic complaints as
  the one from James M. Gatwood of San Ramon,
  California. In seven visits to his dentist he
  spent 2,800 and the dentist still calls him
  Sidney. Gatwood asks in frustration, Who the
  hell is Sidney?
• (Nilsen Nilsen Encyclopedia 168)

13

• There is double irony in O. Henrys story The
  Gift of the Magi in which a husband sells his
  watch to buy combs for his wifes hair and she
  sells her hair to buy a gold chain for his watch.
  
• This is similar to the joke about the two
  friends, one a Catholic and one a Protestant, who
  try to convert each other.
• They present such convincing arguments that the
  Protestant becomes a Catholic and the Catholic
  becomes a Protestant.
• (Nilsen Nilsen Encyclopedia 169).

14
!SOCRATIC IRONY

• Socratic irony occurs when a person pretends to
  be ignorant and willing to learn from another,
  but then asks adroit questions that expose the
  weaknesses in the other persons argument.
• (Nilsen Nilsen Encyclopedia 169)

15
!!STABLE IRONY VS. OBSERVABLE IRONY

• Literary critic Wayne Booth uses the term stable
  irony to refer to that which humans create to be
  heard or read and understood with some precision.
  He says that stable ironies allow readers
  glimpses into authors most private thoughts.
• An example of Observable irony is when a
  premature monsoon ruins an armys invasion plans
  or lightning strikes just as a preacher raises
  his arms to make a dramatic point about God.
• In such situations, all that is needed is an
  aware observer. Writers and dramatists often
  work such observable ironies into their plots
  (Nilsen Nilsen Encyclopedia 169).

16
!!!TRAGIC IRONY

• Tragic irony is used for situations where there
  are terrible consequences, as in the Greek drama
  Oedipus Rex.

17
VISUAL IRONY
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