Welcome to bookchat where you can talk about anything...books, plays, essays, and books on tape. You don’t have to be reading a book to come in, sit down, and chat with us.
Irony is just honesty with the volume cranked up.
George Saunders
http://www.brainyquote.com/...
Irony is hard to define or understand, but it is one of those things you know when you see it. The response to irony is often "ouch!".
Irony
Louis Untermeyer
Why are the things that have no death
The ones with neither sight nor breath!
Eternity is thrust upon
A bit of earth, a senseless stone.
A grain of dust, a casual clod
Receives the greatest gift of God.
A pebble in the roadway lies—
It never dies.
The grass our fathers cut away
Is growing on their graves today;
The tiniest brooks that scarcely flow
Eternally will come and go.
There is no kind of death to kill
The sands that lie so meek and still. . . .
But Man is great and strong and wise—
And so he dies.
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/...
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
Types of irony
Modern theories of rhetoric distinguish among verbal, dramatic and situational irony.
Verbal irony is a disparity of expression and intention: when a speaker says one thing but means another, or when a literal meaning is contrary to its intended effect. An example of this is when someone says "Oh, that's beautiful", when what they mean (probably conveyed by their tone) is they find "that" quite ugly.
Dramatic irony is a disparity of expression and awareness: when words and actions possess a significance that the listener or audience understands, but the speaker or character does not. For example when a character says to another "I'll love you until I die!" not realizing a piano is about to crush them.
Situational irony is the disparity of intention and result: when the result of an action is contrary to the desired or expected effect. Likewise, cosmic irony is disparity between human desires and the harsh realities of the outside world. By some definitions, situational irony and cosmic irony are not irony at all.
There are many stories and plays that are full of irony.
Oedipus is a classic.
The Glass Menagerie is one I love. The gentleman caller is already engaged to another girl, and the narrator Tom who loves his sister is already heading out of her life forever while the unicorn loses its horn and becomes like the other glass animals.
The film of The Man in the Glass Booth left me gasping with admiration from the terrible and terrifying irony.
Achilles is dipped in the river Styx by his mother to keep him safe, but she holds him by his ankle which makes him vulnerable.
Ironical things are those that catch us by surprise. All roads do not necessarily lead to Rome, many of them lead to irony. The stories about someone being given three wishes, for example, or the tale of Midas who received his wish that all he touched would turn to gold.
Irony touches deep, deep down inside us.
The reason that the story of The Secret Garden affects us so much is the intense irony of it all. It ends happily. Two lost, orphaned and abandoned children find each other and are healed by the lost mother’s wild garden and they in turn reduce the despair of the crippled father.
The irony in children’s stories often centers around the inability of adults to help the children who must become independent and help themselves. Harry Potter is a prime example.
The irony of the weak who conquer, the lost who find others, the treasures that are not gold, the gifts that are treacherous as Ulysses’ wooden horse, the blind who see better than those with sight, are what we think of when we think of irony.
Other examples:
The Iceman Cometh by Eugene O’Neil
The Ballad Of Reading Gaol
The whole poem is here:
http://www.gutenberg.org/...
by Oscar Wilde
I only knew what hunted thought
Quickened his step, and why
He looked upon the garish day
With such a wistful eye;
The man had killed the thing he loved
And so he had to die.
Yet each man kills the thing he loves
By each let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!
A good essay with interesting examples is here:
Examples of Irony
July 2, 2010
Author: John
http://www.articlealley.com/...
from the essay:
The situational irony is used by Anne Tyler in her literary work
titled The Accidental Tourist when she writes the following lines:
Seated in a stenographer's chair, tapping away at a typewriter that had served him through four years of college, he wrote a series of guidebooks for people forced to travel on business.
Whoever saw or exposed more irony than Molly Ivins?
I found a treasure trove of Molly Ivin's columns collected here:
http://www.creators.com/...
Just one from the list as an example:
http://www.creators.com/...
Irony abounds. Please add your own favorite examples in the comments.
The Letter I
Iberia by James Michener
The Iceman Cometh by Eugene O’Neil
Ice Station Zebra by Alistair MacLean
Idylls of the King by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
If Ever I Return, Pretty Peggy-O by Sharyn McCrumb
I Have Lived a Thousand Years and sequel by Livia Bitton-Jackson
My Bridges of Hope
I Heard the Owl Call My Name by Margaret Craven
I Know This Much Is True by Wally Lamb
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
The Iliad by Homer
Illumination by Terry McGarry
Ill Wind by Nevada Barr
Immodest Proposals by Tenn short stories
Imperial Stars by Poul Anderson
Impossible Things by Connie Willis, short stories
"Ado" (my favorite)
In an Instant by Lee and Bob Woodruff, memoir
Indian in the Cupboard by Lynne Reid Banks
In Harm’s Way by Doug Stanton
Inherit the Wind by Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee
Inkheart by Cornelia Funke
Inkspell
In My Brother’s Image by Eugene Pogany
In My Hands by Irene Opydyke and Armstrong
Innocent Man by John Grisham
The Intelligencer by Leslie Silbert
Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri, short stories
In the Country of Men by Hisham Matar
In the Forests of Serre by Patricia McKillip
In the Heart of the Sea by Nathaniel Philbrick
In the Skin of a Lion by Michael Ondaatje
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
Iphigenia at Aulis by Euripedes
Iphigenia in Tauris
Iris and Her Friends by John Bayley Memoir of Iris Murdoch in her last days
Irish RM by Somerville and Ross
I, Robot by Isaac Asimov
Ironfire by David Ball
Iron Shoes by Molly Giles
Islands in the Stream by Ernest Hemingway
Island of Hope, Island of Tears by Brownstone, Franck, Brownstone (Ellis Island)
Island Voices by ed. Salkey (short stories from the West Indies)
Isle of Canes by Elizabeth Shown Mills
Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott
I Will Bear Witness II...1942-45 Diary of Victor Klemperer
Izzy, Willy-Nilly by Cynthia Voight
Diaries of the Week
Write On! A Scandal at Shoney's
by SensibleShoes
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Thursday Classical Music OPUS 16: Brahms' Symphony #4 in E minor
by Dumbo
http://www.dailykos.com/...
To Tell The Truth: Publicity Hounds
by Word Alchemy
http://www.dailykos.com/...
NOTE: plf515 has book talk on Wednesday mornings early. Watch for extra editions on Sundays!
sarahnity’s list of DKos authors has grown so much that she has her own diary.
http://www.dailykos.com/...
sarahnity says:
It turns out that we have quite a few authors hanging out here who have published books in the real world. A while ago, I started keeping a list of books by Kossacks, former Kossacks and Kossacks-once-removed. I was posting it each week to the diary series What Are You Reading and Bookflurries, but the list has grown long enough, that I've decided to turn it into a diary and post it as a weekly series on Tuesday evenings.
Not all Kossack authors may wish to lose their anonymity, so I am only including the author's UID if he has outed herself here (gender confusion intended). If you'd like to be included on the list, or if you know of an author who is left off, please leave a comment or email me.
(sarahnity@gmail.com)