3 Types of Irony: Types of Irony Explained

Irony is a literary device that contrasts expectations and reality. Storytellers use ironic situations to create humor, suspense, and an emphasis on a particular subject. By highlighting the incongruity of a situation or action, irony draws attention to a plot point, character trait, or thematic argument.

There are three different types of irony to explore.

1. 1. Dramatic irony: Also known as tragic irony, this type of irony occurs when the audience knows something that the main characters do not. For example, in William Shakespeare’s Othello (1603), Othello trusts Iago—but the audience knows better. Another example of dramatic irony is the Greek tragedy Oedipus Rex (circa 429 BCE) by Sophocles, where the audience knows the main character’s tragic fate before he does.
2. 2. Situational irony: Situational irony occurs when an expected outcome is subverted. For example, in O. Henry’s classic short story, “The Gift of the Magi” (1905), a wife cuts off her long hair to sell it in order to buy her husband a chain for his prized watch. Meanwhile, the husband sells his watch in order to buy his wife a comb for her hair. The situational irony comes from each person not expecting to have their gift undercut by the other’s actions. A subset of situational irony is cosmic irony, which highlights incongruities between the absolute, theoretical world and the mundane, grounded reality of everyday life.
3. 3. Verbal irony: The definition of verbal irony is a statement in which the speaker’s words are incongruous with the speaker's intent. A speaker says one thing while meaning another, resulting in an ironic clash between their intended meaning and their literal meaning. Most types of verbal irony can be classified as either overstatement or understatement. Socratic irony is a form of verbal irony, where a person feigns ignorance in order to entice someone else to make claims for argument’s sake. Jonathan Swift’s satirical essay, “A Modest Proposal” (1729), is another example of verbal irony.

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