Irony and Paradox: Meaning and examples.

Paradox is a literary or rhetorical device and it involves two or more qualities or facts that contradict each other. In other words, paradox is a statement whereas two ideas or facts logically contradict each other.

The meaning of paradox can be identified only by careful scrutiny.   The purpose of paradox is to arrest the attention and stimulate fresh thought. 

Let us take examples from George Orwell's Animal Farm.

      1. "All animals are equal, but some  animals are more equal than others"

      2. "War is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength"

Each of these sentences presents logically contradicting concepts and Ideas.

Paradox and New Criticism.

The presence of paradox in poetry has become a serious concern of some of the New Critics, notably, Cleanth Brooks who sees paradox as a fundamental element of poetic language.

Cleanth Brooks considered paradox as one of the methods of reading and critical interpretation. In other words, Cleanth Brooks advocates the importance of paradox as a way of understanding and interpreting poetry. In his book, The Language of Paradox,  he gives importance to paradox by saying that paradox is "the language appropriate and inevitable to poetry". In his other book, The Well Wrought Urn, he says that "the language of poetry is the language of paradox"

Cleanth Brooks selects an example from John Donne's famous poem, "Canonization" whereas he uses paradox as a metaphor. In the poem he uses the religious term, to describe the speaker's physical love for his beloved. Donne argued that both of them withdrew from the physical world and entered into their own world just like saints. This is the example for the poem whereas the two contradicting factors are put together in the name of religion and physical love.

New Critics believe that all parts of a poem are interrelated and contribute to the meaning or the central idea. The job of a critic or a reader is to find unity out of contradicting and conflicting ideas or factors like irony,  paradox, ambiguity, etc.

What is Irony?

Irony is a literary or linguistic device that can be used in written or spoken form. In other words, irony is the statement in which meaning is different from the literal meaning. In such a statement there is a difference between outward meaning and intended meaning. For example:-  telling a rude customer to "have a nice day".  Here in the sentence, the words are used to convey a meaning that is opposite of what is said.  

There are three types of irony:

• Verbal irony
• Situational irony
• Dramatic irony.

Verbal irony.

Here, the New Critics emphasize verbal irony as it is associated with words. An ironic statement is usually used to express attitude or evaluation of an event, person, and incident. But the speaker intends a very different or opposite attitude and evaluation.  Let us take an example from TS Eliot's 'The Waste Land'. "April is the cruellest month". This is the first line of the poem.  Based on the European seasonal cycle April is a  pleasant spring month but the poet feels the month cruel as it brings the First World War's terrible memory back.

Situational irony.

Situational irony occurs when the actual result of a situation is different from what is expected.  Take an example from "The Story of an Hour" by Kate Chopin.   There is a character who desperately mourns when she heard the news regarding the death of her husband in a railroad accident. But at the end of the story, when she saw her husband coming back home, she is shocked and dies as a result.  Here in the situation audience or readers expected that she would be happy when she sees her husband but the thing that happened was quite opposite to what we expected.

Dramatic irony.

Dramatic irony is associated with theatre and performing arts.  Dramatic irony occurs when the reader or audience know more about what is going on than the characters.

New criticism and irony.

Some writers associated with New Criticism give much importance to irony.  Because new critics believe that text is a self-contained, autonomous, self-sufficient object and capable to produce meaning. To get the meaning readers need to concentrate only on words on the page by the close reading. Here the irony is a kind of play with words.  It can also identify by close reading.  

New critics considered irony as one of the criteria which enhances the value of a literary work.  In other words, New Critics say that irony can increase the literary value of work by providing different perspectives or meanings for the same characters or events. Because of this New Critics attribute an important role to irony in the interpretation and evaluation of the literary work. 

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New Criticism.

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