Definition of Dramatic irony
1. Noun. (theater) irony that occurs when the meaning of the situation is understood by the audience but not by the characters in the play.
Generic synonyms: Irony
Definition of Dramatic irony
1. Noun. A theatrical effect in which the meaning of a situation, or some incongruity in the plot, is understood by the audience, but not by the characters in the play. ¹
¹ Source: wiktionary.com
Dramatic Irony Pictures
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Lexicographical Neighbors of Dramatic Irony
Literary usage of Dramatic irony
Below you will find example usage of this term as found in modern and/or classical literature:
1. Classical Weekly (1910)
"dramatic irony consists not only in the contrast between the outer, ...
The difference between these two varieties of dramatic irony may be seen in ..."
2. Goethe's Egmont: Together with Schiller's Essays, Des Grafen Lamoral Von by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Schiller (1898)
"By doing so he introduced a touch of dramatic irony into the work, for, while
Egmont still hopes for liberation, we know that Klärchen has sought death ..."
3. The Play of Today: Studies in Play-structure for the Student and the Theatre by Elizabeth Roxana Hunt (1913)
"It is not untried or experimental, this theory of dramatic suspense, or, more
exactly, of dramatic irony. It is the experience of ..."
4. The Greek Theater and Its Drama by Roy Caston Flickinger (1922)
"The difference between these two varieties of dramatic irony may be seen in ...
But dramatic irony was not confined to tragedy, as a brief analysis of one ..."
5. Essays and Addresses by Richard Claverhouse Jebb (1907)
"In speaking, then, of the dramatic irony of Sophocles ... The "Trachiniae"
and "Electra" may be taken as those in which the dramatic irony is simplest. ..."
6. Macmillan's Magazine by David Masson, George Grove, John Morley, Mowbray Morris (1873)
"The “Ajax” and the two (Edipus plays, again, might be classed together in respect
of dramatic irony; in each case suffering is inflicted by the gods, ..."
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