View
214
Download
1
Category
Preview:
Citation preview
Mr. Curran’s AP Lit. Class, Unit 3Credit to Don L. F. Nilsen
and Alleen Pace Nilsen
13 1
Irony: A Definition
13 2
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS1. Explain “eiron” and “irony” 2. What is dramatic, situational, and verbal irony?3. Who is Chauncy Gardner?4. Explain the irony of “A Rose for Emily,” “Battle
Royal,” “Lust,” “How To Tell True War Stories,” The Rape of the Lock,” “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “Richard Cory,” “AD,” “Next To Of Course God America I,” and “A Man Said to the Universe.”
5. Contrast linguistic and situational irony 6. Contrast irony (gallows humor) and satire 7. What is socratic irony?8. Contrast stable irony and observable irony 9. Explain tragic irony
13 3
GREEK EIRONThe 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)
13 4
JOHNNY CARSONJohnny Carson kept a toilet company from using the
“Here’s Johnny” as a trademark.
They had the slogan, “The World’s Foremost Commodian.”
The judge decided in favor of Carson not because of an invasion of privacy, or because of a demeaning of the plaintiff’s reputation, but because the “Here’s Johnny” toilets might be confused with the “Here’s Johnny” clothing and restaurants.
(Nilsen & Nilsen 190)
13 5
Three Basic Forms of IronyVerbalSituationalDramatic
13 6
Verbal IronyIrony based on language used, usually saying
something that is clearly not the case. Also known as Sarcasm
You are arguing with your mother, who reprimands you for being "smart." Your reply is a sarcastic, "If you think I am smart, then why won't you let me make some smart decisions?"
13 7
Verbal IronyYour boyfriend shows up in ripped up jeans
and a stained t-shirt. With a smirk, you say, "Oh! I see you dressed up for our date. We must be going to a posh restaurant."
13 8
Situational IronyAn example of Irony usually using setting,
characters, or plot twists which draw contrast between the two.
Dead Like Me referenceYou break a date with your girlfriend so you can
go to the ball game with the guys. When you go to the concession stand, you run into your date who is with another guy.
13 9
Situational IronyYou stay up all night studying for a test. When
you go to class, you discover the test is not until the next day.
You break a date with your girlfriend so you can go to the ball game with the guys. When you go to the concession stand, you run into your date who is with another guy.
13 10
DRAMATIC IRONYDramatic irony occurs when the audience members know things that the characters do not know.
13 11
Dramatic IronyHave you ever seen a horror movie that has a
killer on the loose? You, and the rest of the audience, know that the teenagers should not go walking in the woods late at night, but they think a midnight stroll would be romantic. Needless to say, the teens become the next victims.
13 12
Dramatic IronyWhen watching a talk show, the audience
knows why a person has been brought on the show. However, the person sitting in a chair does not know that he is going to be reunited with a former lover. This adds to the suspense and humor of the show.
13 13
In George Bernard Shaw’s 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; that’s 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)
13 14
Jerzy Kosinski’s 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)
13 15
HISTORY OF IRONYThe 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 Chaucer’s 14th-century Canterbury Tales, an unhappily married merchant grandly praises marriage.
13 16
In William Shakespeare’s 16th-century Julius Caesar, Marc Antony’s extravagant praise of Caesar is ironic.
Jonathan Swift’s 18th-century “Modest Proposal” suggests the English begin eating Irish babies was in no sense modest.
An additional irony is that some of Swift’s opponents read his ironic proposal as legitimate rather than ironic and attempted to have Swift committed as mentally ill.
(Nilsen & Nilsen Encyclopedia 169)
13 17
IRONY VS. SATIRECritic Northrop Frye makes a distinction between satire and
irony. He says that satire is a criticism of society with a clear understanding in the author’s mind of what society should be like, but is not.
The author of a satire hopes to persuade readers to work for the author’s 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 author’s attitude is or what his own is supposed to be, we have irony with relatively little satire” (Frye 131-239).
13 18
LINGUISTIC VS. SITUATIONAL IRONYMany 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 Fulwiler’s Who’s 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 19
There is double irony in O. Henry’s story “The Gift of the Magi” in which a husband sells his watch to buy combs for his wife’s 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).
13 20
SOCRATIC IRONYSocratic 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 person’s argument.
(Nilsen & Nilsen Encyclopedia 169)
13 21
STABLE IRONY VS. OBSERVABLE IRONYLiterary 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 army’s 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).
13 22
TRAGIC IRONYTragic irony is used for situations where there are terrible consequences, as in the Greek drama Oedipus Rex.
13 23
Irony Web SitesFRIENDS OF IRONY:http://www.funnyjunk.com/funny_pictures/1715592/Friends+of+irony/
ALANIS MORISSETTE: “Ironic” Song with Lyrics:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nm-1xvWibt0
13 24
VISUAL IRONY
13 25
References:
Attardo, Salvatore. “Irony as Relevant Inappropriateness.” Journal of Pragmatics 32 (2000): 793-826.
Attardo, Salvatore. “On the Pragmatic Nature of Irony and its Rhetorical Aspects.” in Pragmatics in 2000. Ed. Eniko Nemeth, Antwerp, Belgium: International Pragmatics Association, 2001, 52-66.
Attardo, Salvatore, Jodi Eisterhold, Jennifer Hay, and Isabella Poggi. “Multimodal Markers of Irony and Sarcasm.” HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research 16.2 (2003): 243-261.
Barbe, Katharina. Irony in Context. Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 1995.
Booth, Wayne. The Rhetoric of Irony. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1974.
Brown, Robert L. “The Pragmatics of Verbal Irony.” in Language Use and the Uses of Language Eds. Roger W. Shuy and Anna Shnukal. 1976, 111-127.
Brower, Reuben A. “Light and Bright and Sparkling: Irony and Fiction in Pride and Prejudice.” Twentieth Century Interpretations of “Pride and Prejudice.” Ed. E. Rubenstein. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1969, 31-45.
13 26
Clift, Rebecca. “Irony in Conversation.” Language in Society 28.4 (1960): 491-656.
Colletta, Lisa. “Political Satire and Postmodern Irony in the Age of Stephen Colbert and John Stewart.” Journal of Popular Culture (Oct. 2009): 856-874.
Colston, H. L. “Salting a Wound or Sugaring a Pill: The Pragmatic Functions of Ironic Criticism.” Discourse Processes 23 (1997): 25-45.
Colston, Herbert L., and S. Lee. “Gender Differences in Verbal Irony Use.” Metaphor and Symbol (2004): 289-306.
Coromines I Calders, Diana. “Intensification, Reduction or Preservation of Irony? Günter Grass’s “Im Krebsgang” and Its Translation into English.” in Dimensions of Humor: Exlorations in Linguistics, Literature, Cultural Studies and Translation. Ed. Carmen Valero Garcés. València, Spain: Universitat de València, 2010, 141-168.
Dews, Shelly. “Muting the Meaning: A Social Function of Irony.” Metaphor and Symbolic Activity 10.1 (1995): 3-19.
Falletta, Nicholas. The Paradoxicon. New York, NY: Wiley, 1983.
13 27
Frye, Northrop. Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ Press, 1957.
Gans, Eric. Signs of Paradox, Irony, Resentment, and Other Mimetic Structures Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997.
Gibbs, Raymond W., Jr., and Christen D. Izzett. “Irony as Persuasive Communication.” in Figurative Language Comprehension: Social and Cultural Influences. Ed. Katz and Colston. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 2005.
Gibbs, Raymond W. Jr., and Herbert L. Colston, editors. Irony in Language and Thought: A Cognitive Science Reader. New York, NY: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2007.
Gibbs, Raymond W., Jr. “Irony in Talk among Friends.” Metaphor and Symbol 15 (2000): 5-27.
Giora, R. “On Irony and Negotiation.” Discourse Processes 19 (1995): 329-264.
Good, Edwin M. Irony in the Old Testament. Sheffield, England: Almond, 1981.
13 28
Graban, Tarez Samra. “Feminine Irony and the Art of Linguistic Cooperation in Anne Askew’s Sixteenth-Century Examninacyons. Rhetorica 25.4 (2007): 385-413.
Grimwood, Tom. “The Problems of Irony: Philosophical Reflection on Method, Discourse and Interpretation.” Journal for Cultural Research (2008): 349-363.
Gurewitch, Morton. The Ironic Temper and the Comic Imagination. Detroit, MI: Wayne State Univ Press, 1994.
Handwerk, Gary J. Irony and Ethics in Narrative: From Shlegel to Lacan. New Haven, CT: Yale Univ Press, 1985.
Holland, Glenn S. Divine Irony. Selinsgrove, PA: Susquehanna Univ Press, 2004.
Hutchens, Eleanor N. “The Identification of Irony.” English Language Handbook 27.4 (1960): 249-363.
Jablonski, Carol J. “Dorothy Day’s Contested Legacy: ‘Humble Irony’ as a Constraint on Memory.” Journal of Communication and Religion 23 (2000): 29-49.
13 29
Katz, Albert N. “Introduction to the Special Issue: The Uses and Processing of Irony and Sarcasm.” Metaphor and Symbol (January, 2000): 1-3.
Katz, Albert N., Dawn G. Blasko, and A. Victoria. “Saying What You Don’t Mean.” Current Directions in Psychological Science. New York, NY: Wiley-Blackwell, (2004): 186-189.
Kaufer, David. “Irony and Rhetorical Strategy.” Philosophy and Rhetoric 10.2 (1977): 90-110.
Kaufer, David. “Understanding Ironic Communication.” Journal of Pragmatics 5 (1981): 495-510.
Knox, Norman. The Word Irony and Its Context, 1500-1755. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1961.
Kotthoff, Helga. “An Interactional Approach to Irony Development.” Humor in Interaction. Eds. Neal R. Norrick and Delia Chiaro. Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins, 2009, 49-77.
13 30
Kreuz, Roger J., and Richard M. Roberts. “On Satire and Parody: The Importance of Being Ironic.” Metaphor and Symbolic Activity 8.2 (1993): 97-109.
LaMarre, Heather L., Kristen D. Landreville, and Michael A. Beam. “The Irony of Satire.” International Journal of Press/Politics 14.2 (2009): 212-231.
Lagerwerf, L. “Irony and Sarcasm in Advertisements: Effects of Relevant Inappropriateness.” Journal of Pragmatics 39.10 (2007): 1702-1721.
Lang, Candace. Irony/Humor: Critical Paradigms. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988.
Lucariello, Joan, and Catherine Mindolovich. “The Development of Complex Metarepresentational Reasoning: The Case of Situational Irony.” Cognitive Development 10.4 (1995): 551-556.
Muecke, Douglas Colin. Irony and the Ironic. New York, NY: Methuen, 1980.
Frances Muecke. “Foreshadowing and Dramatic Irony in the Story of Dido.” The American Journal of Philology 104.2 (1983): 134-155.
13 31
Myers, Greg. “The Rhetoric of Irony in Academic Writing.” Written Communication 7.4 (1990): 419-455.
Nilsen, Alleen Pace, and Don L. F. Nilsen. Encyclopedia of 20th-Century American Humor. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2000.
Nilsen, Don L. F., and Alleen Pace Nilsen. “Irony.” Comedy: A Geographic and Historical Guide, Volume II. Ed. Maurice Charney. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2005, 394-409.
Olson, Kathryn M., and Clark D. Olson. “Beyond Strategy: A Reader-Centered Analysis of Irony’s Dual Persuasive Uses.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 91.1 (2004): 24-52.
Pexman, Penny M. “It’s Fascinating Research: The Cognition of Verbal Irony.” Current Directions in Psychological Science 17.4 (2008): 286-290.
Pexman, Penny M. “Social Factors in the Interpretation of Verbal Irony: The Roles of Speaker and Listener Characteristics.” in Figurative Language Comprehension Eds. H. L. Colston and A. N. Katz. Mahway, NJ, 2005, 209-232.
Pexman, Penny M., and Kara Olineck. “Does Sarcasm Always Sting? Investigating the Impact of Ironic Insults and Ironic Compliments.” Discourse Processes 33.3 (2002): 199-217.
13 32
Pexman, Penny M., L. Zdrazilova, and D. McConnachie. “That was smooth, mon”: Children’s Production of Verbal and Gestural Irony.” Metaphor and Symbol (2009): 237-248.
Pole, J. R. “An Anatomy of American Irony.” Raritan 24.1 (2004): 113-132.
Purdy, Jebediah. For Common Things: Irony, Trust, and Commitment in America Today. New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999.
Ritchie, David. “Frame-Shifting in Humor and Irony.” Metaphor and Syhmbol 20 (2005): 275-294.
Roochnik, David. “Review: Irony and Accessibility.” Political Theory ? .? (????): 869-885.
Searle, John R. “Metaphor.” in Pragmatics: A Reader Ed. Steven Davis, New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1991, 519-539.
Sedgewick, Garnett Gladwin. Of Irony: Especially in Drama. Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto Press, 1948.
Sperber, Dan, and Deidre Wilson. “Irony and the Use-Mention Distinction.” in Radical Pragmatics. Ed. P. Cole, New York, NY: Academic Press, 295-318; also in Pragmatics: A Reader Ed. S. Davis, New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1991, 550-563.
13 33
Swearingen, C. Jan. Rhetoric and Irony: Western Literacy and Western Lies. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1991.
Swearingen, C. Jan. “The Rhetor as Eiron: Plato’s Defense of Dialogue.” PRE/TEXT 3.4 (1982).
Wilson, Deirder. “The Pragmatics of Verbal Irony: Echo or Pretence?” Lingua 116 (2006): 1722-1743.
Williams, Dana A. African American Humor, Irony, and Satire: Ishmael Reed, Satirically Speaking. Cambridge, England: Cambridge Scholars Publishinlg, 2007.
Williams, Joana P. “Does Mention (or Pretense) Exhaust the Concept of Irony?” Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. 113.1 (1984): 127-129.
Wright, Andrew H. “Irony and Fiction.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Symbolism, and Creative Imagination 12.1 (1953): 1-143.
Wright, Elizabeth A. “‘Joking isn’t safe’: Fanny Fern, Irony, and Signifyin(g).” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 31.2 (2001): 91-110.
13 34
Recommended