Irony - denten-courses/metaphor-media GitHub Wiki
Synthesis
Irony is a class of metaphor that in the broadest sense is used to indicate something different from surface meaning. Irony can take many forms, including as a rhetorical device, a literary technique, a dramatic presentation, or an situation. Unlike the definitions of many other metaphorical constructs, the basic definition of irony has remained relatively consistent. While there has been discussion and disagreement over the different classes of irony, this dictionary entry serves to give a broader overview of the term and so will only provide a cursory look at these classes.
Irony derives from the Greek dramatic tradition. The earliest uses of irony relates to Greek drama, in which the term ironia was used to describe the construct of a particular event that was seen as ironic on stage or in real life situations that were then metaphorically retrofitted to have similar context to the stage. Such events are generally ironic because the observer - in the dramatic tradition, the literal audience - is aware of some outside information that the actors of the event are not privy to, with such information being important to determining how said actors intend to behave. The idea of hidden information separate from surface presentation forms the root of all derivative definitions of 'irony'.
In many cases, the hidden information is often the opposite of what is stated. One simple example is if, on a dreary day, someone were to remark, "What a beautiful day." Put another way, irony is an indirect negation. The negation does not need to be absolute, but does have to have contradictory elements such that the audience can process the falsehood. But this simple definition is not all that irony is.
While the taxonomy of irony is not as useful for this particular synthesis as the broader overview itself, subdividing irony may be useful in understanding the effects of irony as a trope. The Greeks were known for their verbal and dramatic irony, the former being when the speaker intends a meaning separate from what is said, and the latter being when the speaker believes his words but author intends for the audience to see that his words are untrue. Obviously, both of these examples of situational irony stem from their usage in Greek drama. At the very basic level, irony is attention-grabbing, by forcing either the speaker's audience or the literal audience to do some additional cognitive processing between both the message and the implied message. Yet irony also injects complexity in what hitherto had been one-dimensional clarity.
The different types of complexity that irony adds are broadly what Kenneth Burke and other more modern writers use to categorize irony into particular brands (romantic, classic, Socratic, and true/humble irony). Rather than discuss the details of each category, it is more noteworthy to analyze the general effect of irony. Burke probably begins this analysis best, by relating irony to the dialetic, which can be roughly explained as a dialogue between conflicting points of view leading to insight beyond either. Irony encourages the dialetic. When a speaker employs irony, he simultaneously asserts two (or more) logically contradictory meanings, and in the tension between those two statements, the dialetic emerges. And in this capacity, irony becomes unique among the literary tropes we have thus studied, in demanding participation and completion from its audience to therefore enlighten.
Quotes
And with those who employ irony, when they themselves are in earnest for irony shows contempt.
Aristotle, Freese. The Art of Rhetoric, G.P. Putnam's, Vol II, II 23.
We have stated in the Poetics how many kinds of jests there are, some of them becoming a gentleman, others not. You should therefore choose the kind that suits you. Irony is more gentlemanly than buffoonery; for the first is employed on one’s own account, the second on that of another.
Aristotle, Freese. The Art of Rhetoric, G.P. Putnam's, Vol III, XVIII 7.
It is an elegant kind of humor, satirical with a mixture of gravity, and adapted to oratory as well as to polite conversation.
Cicero, Watson. Oratory and Orators, Harper and Brothers, LXVI 162.
I have found some who speak of irony as dissimulation, but, in view of the fact that this latter name [p. 401] does not cover the whole range of this figure, I shall follow my general rule and rest content with the Greek term. Irony involving a figure does not differ from the irony which is a trope, as far as its genus is concerned, since in both cases we understand something which is the opposite of what is actually said; on the other hand, a careful consideration of the species of irony will soon reveal the fact that they differ.
Quintilian. Institutes of Oratory, Book IX, ch III.
...and puts it back together in an ironic fashion, pairing the most alien things and separating the closest...
Nietzsche, Breazeale. Philosophy and Truth, Humanities Press, NJ. 90.
For irony we could substitute dialectic...A dialectic aims to give us a representation by the use of mutually related or interacting perspectives - and this resultant perspective of perspectives will necessarily be a reduction in the sense that a chart drawn to scale is a reduction of the area charted.
Burke. Four Master tropes, The Kenyon Review, Vol 3, No 4, 1941.
Irony arises when one tries, by the interaction of terms upon one another, to produce a development which uses all the terms. Hence, from the standpoint of this total form (this "perspective of perspectives"), none of the participating "sub-perspectives" can be treated as either precisely right or precisely wrong. They are all voices, or personalities, or positions, integrally affecting one another.
Burke. Four Master tropes, The Kenyon Review, Vol 3, No 4, 1941.
Merriam-Webster’s collegiate dictionary (10th ed.). Irony. (2018). Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster Inc.
The use of words to express something other than and especially the opposite of the literal meaning.
Incongruity between the actual result of a sequence of events and the normal or expected result.
Examples
Or ironically, as for instance, " He said this and I answered that what would he have done, if he had proved this, and not simply that?"
Aristotle, Freese. The Art of Rhetoric, G.P. Putnam's, Vol III, XIX 1-5.
Or we can use irony (ironia): 'You did not win much praise' can be rephrased as 'That was indeed splendid praise you won'
Erasmus. De Copia, Book I, 32.
"Kant seems," says Goethe, "to have woven a certain element of irony into his method. For, while at one time he seemed to be bent on limiting our faculties of knowledge in the narrowest way, at another time he pointed, as it were with a side gesture, beyond the limits which he himself and drawn."
Kant, Bernard. Critique of Judgement, Macmillan and Co, 1941. xl.
Works Cited
Aristotle, Freese. The Art of Rhetoric, G.P. Putnam's, Vol II, II 23.
Cicerom Watson. Oratory and Orators, Harper and Brothers, LXVI 162.
Erasmus. De Copia, Book I, 32.
Quintilian. Institutes of Oratory, Book IX, ch III.
Kant, Bernard. Critique of Judgement, Macmillan and Co, 1941. xl.
Nietzsche, Breazeale. Philosophy and Truth, Humanities Press, NJ. 90.
Burke. Four Master tropes, The Kenyon Review, Vol 3, No 4, 1941.
Merriam-Webster’s collegiate dictionary (10th ed.). (2018). Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster Incorporated.