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Irony: Difference between revisions
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A mode of expression, through words or events, conveying a reality different from and usually opposite to appearance or expectation. Writers may say the opposite of what they mean, create a reversal between expectation and its fulfillment, or give the audience knowledge that a character lacks, making the character's words have meaning to the audience not perceived by the character. Irony is the most common and most efficient technique of the satirist, because it is an instrument of truth, provides wit and humor, and is usually a least obliquely crtical, in that it deflates, scorns, or attacks (Harris). | A mode of expression, through words or events, conveying a reality different from and usually opposite to appearance or expectation. Writers may say the opposite of what they mean, create a reversal between expectation and its fulfillment, or give the audience knowledge that a character lacks, making the character's words have meaning to the audience not perceived by the character. Irony is the most common and most efficient technique of the satirist, because it is an instrument of truth, provides wit and humor, and is usually a least obliquely crtical, in that it deflates, scorns, or attacks (Harris). | ||
The importance of irony in modern art and literature and, more latterly in the intelectural sciences and in culture generally, can hardly be overestimated. For some writers the cultivation of irony is the most essential qualification for any thought, any art or literature or social or political therory to be truly modern. Charles Lemert refers to irony as discursive form of post modern social therory. He claims that irony is the only and necessary attitude for theroy today, and that postmodernism is an ironic general theory. But, other writers have noted the cancerous growth in the use of irony in art and literature. We have associated irony easily with humour, but we have recognise. Irony can be bitter and even tragic. It corrodes and undermines pretensions, unmaskd appearances, and deconstructs | |||
===Verbal Irony=== | ===Verbal Irony=== | ||