Austen uses irony as a means of being understated. Swift, by contrast, uses irony for polemical purposes, conjuring grotesque images ironically babies being eaten, mankind enslaved to the morally superior horse in order to state his case that the Irish were starving, that humanity was going to the dogs ever more forcefully.
Phase three Irony as a tool of dissent, a grim but failsafe gag and mainstay of popular culture, took hold during the first world war 3. The gross disjunction between patriotic rhetoric and the reality of the war itself led to a widespread use of irony as a means of puncturing deceitful propaganda.
Every convention of today's ironic, satirical news forms from Private Eye, through Viz, to the Onion has a germ in the Wipers Times, the first world war trench newspaper established, independently of military authority, by Captain FJ Roberts of the Sherwood Foresters.
At this point, irony was still purporting to be an overview - to be wading through the mulch of accepted wisdom and exposing its fraudulence. So, for instance, the Wipers Times would print a list of Things That Were Definitely True, and it would contain a proportion of propaganda "40, Huns have Surrendered" , a proportion of enemy propaganda "The Germans Have Plentiful and Tasty Meats" and a proportion of nonsense "Horatio Bottomley has accepted the Turkish Throne on condition they make a separate peace" , thus undermining any information coming from anywhere at all it's interesting that the paper was caustically ironic on the subject of the war itself, but never deviated from the line that home leave was a blessed relief, when, in fact, most soldiers found it stressful and devastating to return to normality after the trenches - there is a limit to how far you can take irony before you have to shoot yourself.
Where irony springs up as a response to being lied to by authority, or prevailing culture, or whatever , it is still adhering loosely to Chaucer's model - it states the lie in order to expose the lie, and is therefore a route to truth.
It has some moral import. It may say "This belief is wrong", but it doesn't say "All belief is wrong". When people call ours the Age of Irony, that is not the kind of irony they are on about.
Phase four Our age has not so much redefined irony, as focused on just one of its aspects. Irony has been manipulated to echo postmodernism. The postmodern, in art, architecture, literature, film, all that, is exclusively self-referential - its core implication is that art is used up, so it constantly recycles and quotes itself.
Its entirely self-conscious stance precludes sincerity, sentiment, emoting of any kind, and thus has to rule out the existence of ultimate truth or moral certainty. Irony, in this context, is not there to lance a boil of duplicity, but rather to undermine sincerity altogether, to beggar the mere possibility of a meaningful moral position. In this sense it is, indeed, indivisible from cynicism. This isn't to say that "truth-seeking" irony has evaporated - many creative forms still use irony to highlight the sheer, grinding horror of pursuits or points of view that are considered "normal" like The Office, for instance; and much of American literature is masterfully good at employing irony with a purpose - to choose at random, Pastoralia, by George Saunders, Infinite Jest, by David Foster Wallace, anything by Philip Roth, The Corrections, by Jonathan Franzen.
But other strands of media use irony to assert their right to have no position whatsoever. So, you take a cover of FHM, with tits on the front - and it's ironic because it appears to be saying "women are objects", yet of course it isn't saying that, because we're in a postfeminist age.
But nor is it saying "women aren't objects", because that would be dated, over-sincere, mawkish even. So, it's effectively saying "women are neither objects, nor non-objects - and here are some tits! In fact, I'm not saying anything at all. But I get to keep the tits.
So, we're not the first age to use irony as some insist , but we are the first to use it in this vacuous, agenda-free and often highly amusing way. Politicians especially but serious minds of all sorts dislike this newish twist of irony, since political rhetoric relies on moral framework - they may be spinning, they may be sexing up their evidence, they may be lying straight to our faces as we beseech them not to kill innocent Iraqis for no good reason as an example , but at least old-fashioned protest waits until it knows it has been lied to before it unleashes its irony.
Modern irony ridicules politicians regardless, for their sheer unironic-ness in holding a position in the first place. So, upon the giant disaster, many people were glad to declare irony's end.
Gerry Howard, editorial director of Broadway Books, said, "I think somebody should do a marker that says irony died on This is striking as the kind of American self-importance that leads people to think they have no sense of irony in the first place. But there is legitimacy in the claim - for a very short time, the event seemed so earth-shattering that there did seem to be an absolute and clear dichotomy between good and evil. Once you've got one of those, then a the act of seeking the truth through irony is pointless, because the truth is staring you in the face; and b the postmodern ironic distance that eschews concepts like "good" and "evil" has been trounced.
Naturally, irony was back within a few days, not least because of the myriad ironies contained within the attack itself America having funded al-Qaida is ironic; America raining bombs and peanut butter on Afghanistan is ironic.
But even without those ironic features, irony would have resurfaced pretty soon - only a very fresh tragedy can silence it. The end of irony would be a disaster for the world - bad things will always occur, and those at fault will always attempt to cover them up with emotional and overblown language. If their opponents have to emote back at them, you're basically looking at a battle of wills, and the winner will be the person who can beat their breast the hardest without getting embarrassed.
Irony allows you to launch a challenge without being dragged into this orbit of self-regarding sentiment that you get from Tony Blair, say, when he talks about "fighting for what's right".
Irony can deflate a windbag in the way that very little else can. What people usually mean when they yearn for an end to irony is an end to postmodernism. I'm not sure this will ever happen, since it places itself after originality and progress what comes after the afters? Well, cheese, I guess. There are a few reasons why we think the Americans have no sense of irony.
First, theirs is rather an optimistic culture, full of love of country and dewy-eyed self-belief and all the things that Europe's lost going through the war spindryer for the thousandth time. This is all faith-based - faith in God, faith in the goodness of humanity, etc - and irony can never coexist with faith, since the mere act of questioning causes the faith fairy to disappear.
Second, they have a very giving register that, with a sense of irony, would be unsustainable how can you wish a stranger a nice day with a straight face?
For aid in distinguishing the various devices that tend to be grouped under "humor," this guide, from Henry W. Fowler ["Modern English Usage," ] may be of use:. Entries linking to irony verb n. Others are reading.
Harper, D. Etymology of irony. Online Etymology Dictionary. Scott Fitzgerald is typical: "It is an ironic thought that the last picture job I took—against my better judgment—yielded me five thousand dollars five hundred and cost over four thousand in medical attention.
The word irony has come to be applied to events that are merely curious or coincidental, and while some feel this is an incorrect use of the word, it is merely a new one. These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'irony. Send us feedback. See more words from the same year. After a widely read essay offered ways to "live without irony" Accessed 13 Nov.
Nglish: Translation of irony for Spanish Speakers. Britannica English: Translation of irony for Arabic Speakers. Subscribe to America's largest dictionary and get thousands more definitions and advanced search—ad free! Log in Sign Up. Save Word. Essential Meaning of irony. She described her vacation with heavy irony as "an educational experience. See More Examples That's just one of life's little ironies. The irony of the situation was apparent to everyone.
He has a strong sense of irony. Full Definition of irony.
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