IMPORTANCE OF TONE

To misinterpret tone is to misinterpret meaning.

If students miss irony

or sarcasm, they may find something serious

in veiled humor.

IRONYOften a poem introduces distance between whathappens or is said and what we expect to happen or toperceive, causing us to feel the tension between thetwo conflicting ideas.

This uneasy (and sometimes amusing) distance, ordisassociation, is called irony. It's easier to illustrate thanexplain.

IRONY

The use of irony assumes

two audiences:

one who understands

only one meaning

and one who also understands

an alternative meaning.

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DRAMATIC IRONY

In dramatic irony,

the first audience is the speaker or

the character on stage who

doesn't have all the information.

The second audience is the

literal audience or another character

who does have all the information.

DRAMATIC IRONYIn Romeo and Juliet we know Juliet is

weeping because Romeo has been

banished. Her mother thinks Juliet is

weeping for the death of Tybalt.

Juliet says she wants to go to

Romeo to show him

how she feels about him.

DRAMATIC IRONY

In King Lear we know that Edmund

the bastard is tricking his brother and father

into believing that each is trying to harm

the other so Edmund can inherit everything.

Meanwhile Gloucester and Edgar, by

trusting Edmund, play into his hands.

VERBAL IRONY

In verbal irony, the first audience is

the person who takes a statement

at face value;

the second audience is

the person who understands that

the statement actually means its opposite.

Verbal Irony or Sarcasm?

What is the difference between ironic statements and sarcastic statements?

Irony is usually directed inwardlyat the speaker’s own flaws.

Sarcasm is usually directed at others tocriticize while maintaining deniability.

That’s it, Granddad. I’m never going to the movies with you again.

Why not?!

Because you start yelling in the theater about how you’re old and you don’t have much time left and you don’t want your precious last hours wasted by a bad movie!

It’s terribly, terribly embarrassing!

But you yell the same thing!!

It’s humorously IRONIC when I do it.

SITUATIONAL IRONY

In situational irony the first audience is

the person in the situation;

the second audience is the observer

who understands that the situation

reveals a comic

or tragic human condition.

SITUATIONAL IRONY

In The Octopus by Frank Norris, an evilrailroad agent drives farmers into bankruptcy and corners the market on wheat by raising shipping rates.

Just when he has successfully reached hisgoal, he falls into a railroad car being loaded with wheat and is smothered by it.

SITUATIONAL IRONY

• It is only when Lear goes mad that he understands what he did to Cordelia

• It is only when Gloucester is blinded that he ‘sees’ that Edgar was a good son and Edmund was the evil plotter.

Irony does not mean simply, "things that a bummer." For example, if it were to rain on your wedding day, that would be a bummer, but it would not be ironic.

A better example of irony would be to write a song with irony as its topic, and then to list a bunch of events that aren't at all ironic.

Don't ya think? Alanis Morrisette?

Which irony is this? United Fire & Casualty, a property

and casualty insurer that got flooded out of its headquarters in Cedar Rapids, Iowa this week, announced it expects to report losses this quarter because

it wasn't fully insured. True story from 2008 spring flooding

SARCASM AND IRONY

Things in the video that were

• IRONIC

• Looking for Dixie – she’s right under his NOSE

• Fire department fire• Paying to return

newspaper?

• SARCASTIC

• Her refusal of a coat?