Irony is a disciplinarian feared only by those who do not know it,
but cherished by those who do Soren Kierkegaard
Available at Amazon if you dare
Irony is the clash of opposites. It is the juxtaposition of what is expected against what happens; what you know and what you think you know. It is not the same as coincidence. If a ginger person finds that the only drinks left at a party are cans of ginger beer and ginger ale, this is not ironic. If anything, this is the opposite of irony. If there is a convention of ginger hair haters and the only drink available is ginger beer or ginger ale, this may be considered ironic, but it's a long shot.
Nor is it bad luck.If a president is killed by someone accidentally discharging their weapon, this is bad luck. If they are killed by someone discharging their weapon in celebration of that president being elected, that is ironic.
Three kinds of irony:
- 1. verbal irony is when an author says one thing and means something else.
- 2. dramatic irony is when an audience perceives something that a character in the literature does not know.
- 3. irony of situation is a discrepency between the expected result and actual results.
- In verbal irony (sometimes called rhetorical irony), probably the most straightforward kind of irony, the speaker says something different from what he or she really believes. In its crudest form it's called sarcasm, where the speaker intentionally says the opposite of what he or she believes, and expects the audience to recognize the dissembling: for example, "Rutgers's Hill Hall is truly a palace, suited only to kings and princes." But verbal irony needn't be so crude: more subtle kinds of verbal irony, including understatement and hyperbole, abound.
- In dramatic irony, the audience is more aware than the characters in a work (often, but not necessarily, a drama), and what the characters say takes on a new significance to the audience. A famous example of tragic dramatic irony is the opening of Sophocles' Oedipus Rex, when Oedipus, the ruler of Thebes, promises to punish the man whose sins have brought a plague upon the city. Oedipus does not know, but the audience does, that he is himself the evil-doer.
- Cosmic irony comes closest to the common usage: it seems that God or fate is manipulating events so as to inspire false hopes, which are inevitably dashed.
Bo Burnham
Artist: Alanis Morissette Lyrics to 'Ironic' :
An old man turned ninety-eight
He won the lottery and died the next day
It's a black fly in your Chardonnay
It's a death row pardon two minutes too late
Isn't it ironic, don't you think
[Chorus]
It's like rain on your wedding day
It's a free ride when you've already paid
It's the good advice that you just didn't take
Who would've thought, it figures
Mr. Play It Safe was afraid to fly
He packed his suitcase and kissed his kids good-bye
He waited his whole damn life to take that flight
And as the plane crashed down he thought
"Well, isn't this nice."
And isn't it ironic,l don't you think
[Chorus]
Well, life has a funny way of sneaking up on you
When you think everything's okay and everything's going right
And life has a funny way of helping you out when
You think everything's gone wrong and everything blows up
In your face
A traffic jam when you're already late
A no-smoking sign on your cigarette break
It's like 10,000 spoons when all you need is a knife
It's meeting the man of my dreams
And then meeting his beautiful wife
And isn't it ironic, don't you think
A little too ironic, and yeah I really do think
[Chorus]
Well, life has a funny way of sneaking up on you
And life has a funny way of helping you out
Helping you out.
To Morisette’s credit, the fact that most of the examples of irony that she gives are not proper examples of irony is, itself, quite ironic.
Ball's lamp produced by Ligne Roset entitled 'One day I'll design the perfect paper lampshade' is an illuminated wire waste paper basket filled with screwed up sketches of lampshade designs. Sticking a light-fitting in a wastebasket would not have been enough. The sketches, and the title help elicit the ironic image of the designer toiling away at his desk while next to him he has inadvertently created what he has been searching for.
The Greatest Punctuation in the History of Mankind.~
I've been waiting for someone to bite on this. The Snark* (formerly 'irony mark') is a proposed sentence terminator designed to imply a second, often sarcastic, or otherwise verbally ironic, meaning to the preceding text. Intended use is where the intimation of the second meaning might otherwise be lost, because of missing vocal inflection, or other missing contextual hints. This means it is intended to be sparingly used, and normally in informal communications.
This is based on the 19th-21st century ideas of the "point d’ironie" (proposed by the French poet Alcanter de Brahm and, later, Hervé Bazin)and the "sarcasm mark" (proposed by Tara Liloia, Josh Greenman and many others). I suggest one marker for both contexts, and I consider the term "Snark" more inclusive.
The Snark, in this suggested format, looks something like an exclamation mark, laid on its side and bred with a tilde, modified to suit the typeface it is in.
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Ecce homo restoration:
'Ironic Art Fans' Petition To Save World's Worst Restoration Of 'Ecce Homo'The past couple of months the Internet has been all a frenzy over the hilarious and equally horrifying mutilation impromptu restoration of 19th century fresco by a bold 80-year-old woman. Cecilia Gimenez approached the Christ painting "Ecce Homo" by Elias Garcia Martinez and thought it could use a little sprucing up. Unfortunately her restoration got a little out of hand, turning the divine figure into what looks like an furry alien Neanderthal. As one HuffPost commenter put it, "It's Ewok Jesus!" Well, it looks like the world has fallen in love with this particular version of Christ, as devotees have launched a petition attempting to halt the restoration of the restoration.
Associated articles:
Did you know that you can use a Mr. Clean eraser
to get the gunk off the bottom of your iron?
Ironically, it works ._
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