The Identification of Irony

Few terms in modern criticism are more useful than irony, and few are in more danger of losing their usefulness through indiscriminate application. The exploration, during the last few decades, of the functions of irony in literature, and the expanding claims made for it, have given rise to definitions and descriptions more and more inclusive and lacking in particularity, so that if we were given them and asked to say what they defined or described we might think of many things other than irony and might not think of irony at all. This is not to say that a prescriptive definition of the word would necessarily keep it alive and in good health; indeed, its capacity for extension is one of the secrets of its vitality; but there does seem to be some justification for yet another attempt to provide an acceptable means of distinguishing it. Perhaps there still exists, in all of the various manifestations to which the word is now widely applied, a sort of lowest common denominator by which irony may invariably be recognized. Dictionaries customarily define two or more kinds of irony without attempting to state what they have in common that causes them to be given the same name. The OED entry (here abridged) is representative: