Linked from

The 81 pages that link to Irony, each with the reason it gives.

• SatireRelated: Satire often lets a gap between words and reality expose its target.

• ParodyRelated: Irony can sharpen parody but does not require imitation of a source.

• PragmaticsRelated: Interpreting irony requires inferring a speaker’s stance beyond literal words.

• Political satireRelated: Satirists use the gap between official claims and political realities to sharpen criticism.

• New CriticismRelated: New Critical readings often trace how irony complicates a poem’s apparent statements.

• Black comedyRelated: Irony lets comic language coexist with events whose literal meaning is tragic.

• DeadpanRelated: Deadpan often presents ironic meaning without signaling it through vocal or facial emphasis.

• Jane AustenRelated: Her irony makes social pretension and self-deception legible without constant authorial judgment.

• SubtextRelated: A mismatch between words and intended meaning can make subtext legible.

• Social satireRelated: Social satire uses this gap to expose hypocrisy and contradictions.

• AllusionRelated: An allusion can make a gap between surface meaning and implication ironic.

• Picture bookRelated: Words and images can contradict each other to create humor or tension.

• Literary FictionRelated: Irony creates distance between a character’s understanding and a work’s larger view.

• Jonathan SwiftRelated: Swift’s narrators often praise policies or customs so extravagantly that their cruelty becomes visible.

• The OnionRelated: Its headlines often present absurdity as if it were an unremarkable fact.

• Camp (style)Related: Camp often depends on a knowing distance from the extravagance it enjoys.

• Incongruity theoryRelated: Irony can create humor by setting an expected meaning against a contrary one.

• JuxtapositionRelated: A clash between paired elements can expose a gap between appearance and reality.

• War poetryRelated: Irony can expose gaps between official claims of glory and the realities a poem depicts.

• HumorRelated: It can create humor through a gap between what is said and what is meant.

• Graham GreeneRelated: Greene’s plots often expose the gap between declared ideals and their consequences.

• Hans Christian AndersenRelated: Irony lets Andersen expose vanity and conformity without relying only on direct moralizing.

• The Scarlet LetterRelated: The community’s celebrated minister hides the same transgression for which Hester is exposed.

• Madame BovaryRelated: The contrast between Emma’s elevated hopes and mundane circumstances sustains the novel’s critique.

• Natsume SōsekiRelated: His comic narrators use irony to puncture pretension without simplifying social criticism.

• Comic novelRelated: Irony lets a comic novel expose gaps between characters’ beliefs and their behavior.

• Self-deprecationRelated: Self-deprecating remarks can use irony when their literal self-criticism conflicts with what listeners know.

• Wisława SzymborskaRelated: Her poems use understated irony to unsettle confident accounts of history and everyday life.

• Lytton StracheyRelated: His dry irony turns reverential accounts of eminent figures into pointed criticism.

• CandideRelated: Voltaire lets Pangloss’s confident explanations collide with the calamities they supposedly justify.

• JokeRelated: Jokes may use a gap between stated meaning and intended meaning to create humor.

• SuggestionRelated: Irony often suggests a judgment opposite to the words' surface meaning.

• Wilfred OwenRelated: Owen uses bitter irony to expose gaps between patriotic language and soldiers’ experience.

• Flannery O'ConnorRelated: Her narrators let characters' confidence collapse through outcomes they cannot interpret.

• Persona (literature)Related: Irony lets a work expose limits in its persona’s understanding without direct authorial comment.

• Robert MusilRelated: Musil’s irony exposes the distance between public ideals and the motives beneath them.

• Sarah SilvermanRelated: Irony lets her comic voice present offensive statements as targets rather than endorsements.

• Guy de MaupassantRelated: Narrative irony sharpens his exposure of characters’ vanity, hypocrisy, and misjudgment.

• James ThurberRelated: His stories often derive humor from the gap between characters’ self-images and their circumstances.

• O. HenryRelated: Situational irony supplies the reversals in many of his best-known plots.

• Postmodern musicRelated: Irony can make stylistic borrowing both affectionate and critical.

• The True Story of Ah QRelated: The gap between Ah Q’s imagined status and actual power drives the novella’s comedy.

• OxymoronRelated: Oxymorons can create irony, but irony does not require a verbal contradiction.

• Parables of JesusRelated: Reversals in status and expectation give several parables their force.

• Paul de ManRelated: His account of irony emphasizes an unbridgeable gap between linguistic sign and intended meaning.

• The Man Without QualitiesRelated: Irony lets the novel scrutinize its characters’ ideals without replacing them with simple answers.

• William Makepeace ThackerayRelated: Thackeray uses verbal and situational irony to puncture characters’ claims to virtue.

• Anatole FranceRelated: France uses restrained irony to expose the gap between public ideals and human motives.

• Isaac BabelRelated: Babel’s narrators can admire revolutionary ideals while recounting acts that undermine them.

• Literary deviceRelated: The gap between appearance and reality can shape a work’s tone and interpretation.