Course 8—Lecture

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LitCourse 8
How to Read: Irony

Seeing Irony

Authors have been using literary irony for thousands of years. It comes in 4 distinct flavors:

Verbal irony—what's said is not what's meant. Sarcasm is a type of verbal irony.
Situational irony—what happens is the opposite of what's expected or desired.
Dramatic irony—readers know things that characters do not. We're "in the know."
Cosmic irony—bad things happen to good people; a working out of fate.

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