An Accurate Definition of Irony

Hello, I joined this forum today because I was looking for some place where people might be interested in my new definition of irony. I've never been satisfied with any definition of irony because they all either define irony too narrowly, too broadly or just plain incorrectly. For every definition I've seen you can either come up with lots of examples of things that are ironic that fall outside of the definition or you can easily come up with examples of things that are un-ironic but fit the definition. The better definitions tend to define irony in a way that is susceptible to lots of examples that are un-ironic but salvages the definition by adding a description of how the example must make the observer feel in order to be truly ironic.

For example, at merriam-webster.com they offer this "simple" definition of irony "the use of words that mean the opposite of what you really think especially in order to be funny; a situation that is strange or funny because things happen in a way that seems to be the opposite of what you expected."

Actually, this definition tries to save itself by describing how irony makes one feel and gets the feeling wrong. Irony is not mostly or primarily about being funny or strange. Irony is actually the absolute backbone of literature and drama, both dramatic and comic. Oedipus Rex is deeply ironic in its structure because the actions taken by Oedipus's father, Laius, to prevent the fulfillment of the prophecy that his son would murder him and marry his mother proved to be the very vehicle of the fulfillment of the prophecy inasmuch as Oedipus ends up killing his father only because he has no idea that the man he kills is his father.

Sophocles was not trying to be funny by devising this situation. Rather he was demonstrating (in one possible reading) how individuals who make choices out of fear can, through the very measure they employ for self-preservation, become the authors of their own destruction by the very thing they feared.

And irony isn't only or principally a literary device. It abounds in the real world. When I eat fatty and sugary treats every day for the pleasure and comfort they bring me and those foods that I turn to for pleasure and comfort cause me to gain weight so excessively and suffer such terrible health consequences that I end up diminishing the pleasure and comfort that I can experience in life - that is ironic. When I purchase a handgun to protect my family and one of my children ends up playing with it and accidentally killing one of my other children, that is also ironic. It is not funny. It is not strange. It is not even necessarily contrary to what one would expect.

So what makes it ironic? Self-subversion of intent.

Which brings me to my definition of irony. Irony is a recognizable chain of events to which an apparent intent may be imputed resulting in the subversion of that apparent intent.

Irony can be quite subtle or very blatant. Sarcasm is a very blunt form of irony by which a speaker makes a statement which stripped of context has one apparent intent but undermines that apparent intent through use of context clues, such as waggling eyebrows.

A more subtle form of irony is something like the statement "I never lie." A statement to which one would likely impute the intent that the speaker is trying to inspire belief in the individuals veracity, when, in fact, it inspires the opposite since everyone knows that essentially everyone tells a lie at least now and then.

That's as far as I'm prepared to go on the subject right now. I would love it if people try to identify examples of irony that defy my definition.

Welcome to the site, Mr Sniffdog. I like your definition very much, especially as it applies to dramatic and verbal irony. I'm not sure that in situational irony it is always the imputed attempt that subverts itself. It was entirely accidental that Burgess Meredith broke his glasses in the famous Twilight Zone episode about the bookworm who finally had time to read all he wanted after a nuclear holocaust. Perhaps further (the real?) irony was that his exultation in finally being left alone was interrupted by his inability to provide himself with new glasses. But the accidental breaking of the glasses was not part of his attempt to spend all his time reading, and the nuclear holocaust was none of his doing. The irony has to do with his happiness to be rid of others and simultaneous reliance on others to be happy. It reminds me of a verse from an old Tom Waits song:

I'm glad you're gone 'cause I'm finally alone;
I'm glad you're gone but I wish you'd come home.

And classicists sometimes talk about cosmic irony--when the hero's wishes are just not what the gods want--and you may have some problems that, too. Aeneas' intent to be happy ruling Carthage with Dido has nothing to do with Mercury telling him that he has to leave her and bring to Trojan race to Italy. His departure is ironic, though, because it is the last thing he wants to do. And it seems to me that something of this survived into the "a man's got to do what a man's got to do" ethos of the westerns of my youth.

I hope you found these suggestions helpful. And thanks for a really intelligent topic.

Thank you for your reply Mr. Pompey Bum. I think that's a good and interesting challenge to my definition but I do think my definition can still hold up. I don't think it's necessary that a character actually have demonstrable intent that is subverted. It is only necessary that we can impute intent. In the Twilight Zone episode one moral you could use to sum up the story is careful what you wish for. I think the real source of irony in that episode is that he got exactly what he wished for and it ended up being horrible for him. He wished for something. He got it. The causal link is only implied. There are similar stories where people are actually granted wishes that backfire, like King midas's golden touch. The only thing that really separates the stories is that the twilight zone doesn't explicitly offer any mechanism for wish fulfillment. Do you think that's a legitimate application of the definition or just post hoc rationalizing?

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Originally Posted by sniffdog

Do you think that's a legitimate application of the definition or just post hoc rationalizing?

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It's fine, but if wishes are to be included in intent you may want to tweak your definition a little to make that more clear. What are you going to do about Aeneas and cosmic irony?

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Originally Posted by sniffdog

In the Twilight Zone episode one moral you could use to sum up the story is careful what you wish for. I think the real source of irony in that episode is that he got exactly what he wished for and it ended up being horrible for him.

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It's interesting that you put it that way. Since irony seems to require a shared understanding between reader and writer, I wonder if it necessarily (or usually) carries an implicit moral agreement? For example, the moral understanding of The Gift of the Magi is the gift of love is more important than material sacrifice. The understanding of Oedipus is that incest is a crime that will be avenged. But I'm not sure. Do you think irony typically carries/affirms some kind of shared moral understanding?

Irony is 1. a phenomenon in which an individual's apparent, expressed or imputed intentions or desires are subverted by that individuals own efforts to express or attain their desired object or intention. 2. The intentional subversion of the meaning of a symbol or expression.

That's my refinement on my definition. What do you think.

I don't think that cosmic irony is terribly different from ordinary irony. In cosmic irony an individual's own efforts to avoid his fate wind up being the instrumentality of the realization of that fate. The only difference between that sort of irony and ordinary, contemporary frantic irony is the removal of the possibility that the outcome could have been done.

Hi, sniffdog,
I think you have a very good start there. However if you are working out the concept for a paper or thesis I should have a look at the bibliography in English on the theme not only at the dictionary definitions or Wikypedia.
I don´t know if this is any good, and the Google books display is always horrid, but it may help:
https://books.google.com.br/books?hl...0irony&f=false

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Originally Posted by sniffdog

Irony is 1. a phenomenon in which an individual's apparent, expressed or imputed intentions or desires are subverted by that individuals own efforts to express or attain their desired object or intention. 2. The intentional subversion of the meaning of a symbol or expression.

That's my refinement on my definition. What do you think.

I don't think that cosmic irony is terribly different from ordinary irony. In cosmic irony an individual's own efforts to avoid his fate wind up being the instrumentality of the realization of that fate. The only difference between that sort of irony and ordinary, contemporary frantic irony is the removal of the possibility that the outcome could have been done.

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As before I like it very much. I suspect you will still have a problem with certain examples of cosmic irony. How have Aeneas' "apparent, expressed or imputed intentions or desires" been subverted by his own efforts? He wants to stay with Dido, but Mercury tells him that Zeus wants him to jilt her and he dutifully accepts his fate. It is ironic because the author and reader share an understanding (as Dido does not) that on a personal level, this is the last thing he wants.

This example seems to confound your definition of irony. You could argue that it's because it is not really irony, but I'm not sure you'd be on very sound logical ground in doing so (every true Scotsman fallacy or something). Obviously you can agree with this view or not, but if you are doing doctoral work you may want to run it by your advisor to be sure you are on solid ground (as I hope you are).

Thank you Danik, I don't have any professional or academic stake in this subject (I have a bachelor's in literary studies and a JD). But even approaching this as a hobby. You are absolutely right that I should consult some more authoritative sources.

Hey Pompey Bum, this definition is just something I'm working on for fun - no academic or professional stakes - but that doesn't mean I don't want to be thorough and get it right. I really am not that familiar with the story of Aeneas or the concept of cosmic irony. I intend to look into both some more and see how it effects my thinking on the subject. I'll let you know what the results are at some point.

It will probably give you more backbone for your definition and help you to organize your ideas specially as the definition branches out into derivations.

I've been thinking about some other situations that could be considered ironic in the same way that Aeneas' departure from Dido is. Imagine parents who send a boy to boarding school because they wish him to become strong and independent. Driving from the school they weep and worry that he will be bullied, and they agonize over this in the months ahead. When parents weekend comes a few months later, the boy, who has been indeed been bullied, begs them through tears to let him leave the school. The parents sternly tell him to be a man and stop crying. The parents continue to weep and worry privately, but in time the boy grows into a strong and independent young man and even learns to love the classmates who once bullied him.

In that story, the parents stern treatment of the boy was ironic because, as I, the writer, and you, the reader, understood between ourselves--though the boy did not--they wanted to comfort him and were even crying over the situation themselves. In situational irony--the kind you describe in your definition--the boy would have been so damaged by the bullying that he became weak and needy. I don't think that the above story qualifies as cosmic irony exactly since there is no sense of divine will or fate, but it seems to retain the same general pattern as the story of Aeneas and Dido.

ADDED: On reflection I think that the story I told above is just garden variety dramatic irony. Perhaps the Dido and Aeneas story is as well, or maybe it's both dramatic and cosmic irony (it's hard to tell because fate is such an important theme to Virgil). Cosmic irony is usually more similar to what the witches do to Macbeth. That of course would qualify as self-subversion of effort, but Dido and Aeneas would not. In any case, I think you need to consider dramatic irony a potential hole in your definition.

I do think there is a sort of cosmic irony at the heart of being a parent that is well-illustrated by your story. As a parent your job is first to provide for and nurture your children during their early stages of development which they cannot survive and emerge from as healthy thriving individuals without having many things provided to them by someone else. However, as the child matures and develops the parents job shifts more and more toward preparing them to be an independent adult and care for their own children one day.

I think my definition holds up okay in this example. Part of the problem with a lot of definitions of irony I've seen is that they talk about the outcome being opposite of what is expected or intended. In your example their is clearly irony but the result are exactly what is what was intended. That's why I use the word subverted in my definition. Irony doesn't need opposite results. It just needs desire and outcome to be pulling in opposite directions and it needs for the fact that desire and outcome are pulling in opposite directions to be essential to the outcome. As a parent you want to do everything you can to help your children and sometimes that means not doing everything you can to help your children. And if you are fortunate and do your job well, that baby that you loved so dearly will leave your home and rarely need your help at all which is simultaneously a source of joy and heartbreak.

As to Aeneas and Dido, I reviewed the story and I see a lot of irony, particularly from Dido's side. She had sworn to never love again, her sister says don't you want a chance to live and be happy and have children, she gives in to her desire and then is abandoned by Aeneas plunging her into such despair that she kills herself. At least that part of the irony seems to fit my definition well. On Aeneas's side of things, I don't see the irony in the fact that he loved a woman but because he needed to pursue his destiny had to abandon her.

I think I may have just had another insight into irony while responding to your last post. I think it is possible that irony is a subset of paradox. That irony is paradox as applied to desire, intention and expression. I'm going to have to think about that some more but do you think there might be something there?

I've made another refinement to my definition. This is my one sentence definition of irony.

Irony: a subversive, contradictory or paradoxical relationship between desire, intention and expression.

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Originally Posted by sniffdog

Irony: a subversive, contradictory or paradoxical relationship between desire, intention and expression.

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The expansion of your definition to include irony as "paradox...applied to desire, intention and expression" resolves my concerns about the boy at boarding school and even Aeneas' bad break up with Dido, which I still contend was ironic due to the paradoxical subsumption of desire by duty (a bit like the hero of The Pirates of Penzance whose duty led him to for betray his beloved fiancé because he had been born in leap year). But your new definition is broad enough to house all of them.

Thanks PB, you're questions and examples really clarified my thinking on the subject a lot.

You're welcome. Thank you very much for such an intelligent conversation. I hope you stick around.

Thank you. I think I will. This has been great. I'm tweaking my definition yet again. I'm thinking about throwing the words expectation and outcome back into the stew. I was avoiding those words because I kept seeing irony defined as the outcome being the opposite of what is expected. Which, by itself does not capture the meaning of irony at all but I think maybe those words might make some contribution when supported by the rest of the definition. If I ad them back in, the definition reads: a subversive, contradictory or paradoxical relationship between desire, expectation, intention, expression or outcome. (Also change the final "and" to "or" because those five elements can be combined in different ways to create irony and don't all need to be present for their to be irony).

Yes, that is more comprehensive. Another aspect of irony is the parenthetical communication going on between reader and author behind at least one character's back (or sometimes behind the entire narrative's back). I think this is one of the things that makes irony such a powerful literary device. You may want to expand your scope and attempt an entire essay on irony to explore such implications.