Literary Devices-Irony-Figure of Speech-Poetic Devices

 

3.  Irony:

  When the speaker intends something and in reality, it happens just opposite to it, that is called irony. This may be found in the use of words giving just opposite effect or meaning to what the speaker has thought or wished. We find the use of dramatic irony in plenty in Shakespeare’s plays and In Greek tragedy also.

There are three types of irony: Verbal, Situational and Dramatic

   In verbal irony, the speaker intentionally uses the words which he does not really mean to say. He may exaggerate (overstate/inflate) or overestimate the character of a thing or person.   

 

If you say, “You are a great scholar” to someone and, in your opinion, you intend to make fun of the person only to please yourself or you may intend to please others while the person for whom you have uttered the words is rather flattered and pleased at the words, it is an example of verbal irony.

 

Here, we may note the difference between sarcasm and verbal irony. In sarcasm, mostly, the person directly hits the listener to cause pain or insult to the listener by using harsh words.

                                    

Irony becomes dramatic when the audience knows what is going to happen and the characters do not know.  For example, in Act 1, Scene 4, King Duncan says that he trusts Macbeth.

But the audience knows what Macbeth intends and what he is going to do to the King in near future. So this is the best example of dramatic irony.

 

Ironies may occur in stories also. For example, in the story ‘The Tiger King’, a living tiger could not kill the king, but a wooden tiger happened to be the cause of his tiger. In such a case, it will be a situational irony.

 

In simple words, we may say that the use of irony to highlight the difference between the appearance and the reality of things.  In situational irony, the actual result of a situation is totally different from what was expected.