what is the irony in the wife of bath's tale? what is the irony in the miller's tale?
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The Wife's story is set in the time of King Arthur, when fairies abounded in England; she ironically praises holy men, such as the friar, for driving them out. The "hero" of the story is a young knight, condemned to death for rape, but reprieved, at the insistence of Arthur's queen. His life will be spared if he can find out, within a year, what thing women most desire. The knight is troubled, but has no choice. \n\nChaucer, through the Miller (whom he ironically disapproves in his narrator's voice) challenges the conventions of rhetoric, subject and values, which he has first carefully exhibited in The Knight's Tale.
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Irony is best known as a figure of speech (more precisely called verbal irony) in which there is a gap or incongruity between what a speaker or a writer says, and what is understood
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Go to www.sparknotes.com, look up the story, look especially at the section called quotations,  themes, and motifs.
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I love Sonnet 130!\n\nI like this site, too:\n\nhttp://www.shakespeare-online.com/sonnets/130detail.html\n\nIt has the poem paraphrased and analyzed.\n\nMore information, including quotes from other writers is at:\nhttp://members.aol.com/danieledg1/sonnets.html\n\nI hope Shakespeare's mistress had a good sense of humor and that she waited around for the end of the sonnet.
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Two stories from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales that serve as excellent demonstrations of irony are "The Pardoners Tale" and "The Nun's Priest's Tale."  Although these two stories are very different, they both use irony to teach a lesson. \n\nIn "The Pardoner's Tale," the Pardoner uses his story to speak out against many social problems, all of which he is guilty of. He preaches about drunkenness, and he is intoxicated while telling the story. Blasphemy and greed are other problems he speaks of. Ironically, he attempts to sell fake religious relics and is incredibly avaricious.\n\nIn the "Nun's Priest's Tale" we start with the romance, a genre traditionally featuring knights and their ladies, and hardly anyone else at all. The first information we have about Chauntecleer is that "In all the land, of crowyng nas his peer" (4040). This is a perfect opening for a romance in which the heroic central character is usually introduced as the 'best' of all his kind. However, in this context the description pokes fun at the heroic tradition on two counts - 'crowyng' is not heroic, and it is not particularly astonishing that Chauntecleer does it well - it is the natural thing that roosters do.\n\nThe tale moves on to describe Chauntecleer using a classic descriptive technique of a poet lover; described from head to toe with the gorgeous colours of jewels and flowers. It is absurd when applied to Chauntecleer, because it is usually used to describe a beautiful young woman. Ironically the description fits Chauntecleer perfectly, evoking the vainly strutting beauty of this beast.
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I had to read that story a couple months ago. :)\n\nTry entering a theme statement, such as:\n In "The Most Dangerous Game," Richard Connel uses irony(or some other tool can go there) to create the universal idea that ____(theme here)___\n\nThis is how my english teacher likes us to write our themes, and she says it's impressive to end a paragraph with an overall closing theme.
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The "irony" in all this is, we all KNEW you were being "ironic", so, you got more "irony" in return, so who's the "ignorant one"? (And by the way, there's a "black fly in your chardonney"... and it's like, "10,000 spoons when all you need is a knife"...  don't ya think???)\n\nBy the way, I have an I.Q. of "143".\n\n(Man- I love messin' with people's minds!)\n\n(Tera time4u420@yahoo)
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Similarly, in Dragonsong by Anne McCaffrey Menolly also suffers from her family's disapproval. According to her sister Sella, Menolly "can't do anything right," from keeping Old Uncle quiet to correctly gutting a packtail (40). Her parents treat her even worse: Yanus doesn't approve of her tuning as it deviates from the norm, and Mavi often seconds her husband's irritation with their youngest daughter's habits. Both adhere to the rigid structure of Half-Circle Sea Hold, and believe that Menolly's childish tendency threatens not only to bring embarrassment upon them when the new Harper arrives, but also to disrupt the pattern of life in the Hold. Yanus worries "How were the young to know that hers weren't the proper songs for their learning?" (11). When he discovers Menolly's accidental tuning and beats her, no one in the Hold shows her any sign of love or support. Even Mavi supports her husband's actions -- upon her discovery, "An expression of anger and disgust crossed her face. 'So you've been the fool after all?'" is all that she can ask her daughter. Menolly's punishment only serves to further isolate her from those in Half-Circle, causing her to retreat inwardly to nurse her wounded spirit. Already considered abnormal for a girl, she has no interest in boys as do her sister and all the other girls who swoon over the new young Harper, nor does she have any close friends, save for Petiron, the late Harper. Additionally, her preoccupation with music elevates her above the rest of the people in the Hold who have little ability with a guitar or flute. Like Faramir, Menolly's internal suffering because of her family's disapproval becomes so acute that it causes her to somewhat rashly leave the protection of the Hold.\n\n\nDragonsong is the story of Menolly, daughter of masterfisher Yanus, Sea Holder of Halfcircle Seahold on Pern. Menolly is a gifted musician who is punished for using her musical talents after Petiron, the Harper who encouraged her talent, dies. Finding life at the fishing community unbearable, she runs away from home. This is a very dangerous thing to do because of intermittent Thread incursions. Menolly takes refuge in a cave where she discovers some fire-lizards, the precursors to the great dragons that are Pern's first defense against Thread. Isolated from civilization in her cave and forced to care for nine baby fire lizards that she impressed, Menolly quickly learns to be resourceful and independent. Freed from the restrictive role forced upon her by Pernese society, she also finds time to indulge in her passion for music. Menolly is out foraging one day when she is caught in Threadfall. She is rescued by a dragonrider who takes her to Benden Weyr. As she is adjusting to the liberal lifestyle of the Weyrfolk at Benden Weyr, she is discovered by Robinton, the Masterharper of Pern. He recognizes her vocation as a musician and offers her a place at the Harper Hall as his apprentice.\n\n\nRead that last part.
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A Tale of Two Cities -- Charles Dickens\n\nIt is really a typical Soap Opera taking place during the French Revolution.  So much is going on and he brings in so many characters, that I am always amazed at how he was able to tie together all those loose ends and odd scenerios given the timeframe he wrote the book.\n\nMany people have difficulting reading it because there is just too much information given in the first half of the book ... but if you keep up with it you will truly love it!
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Dramatic Irony: The audience knows something the characters on stage do not know.\n\nExamples: The audience knows Juliet has already married Romeo, but Lord Capulet and Count Paris do not.
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Nice one mate, you've spotted an ironic gem of the English language.
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As I recall the story her owes absolutley nothing to them...however we may not be talking about the same Agamemnon here T,T Which story is this from the Odyssey or a different one?\ndamnedatehist@gmail.com -e-mail me if u need help
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Satire - (from dictionary.com)\n1. the use of irony, sarcasm, ridicule, or the like, in exposing, denouncing, or deriding vice, folly, etc.  \n2. a literary composition, in verse or prose, in which human folly and vice are held up to scorn, derision, or ridicule.  \n\ngood word...I probably would have just asked for "symbolism" in Animal Farm.\n\nI think the main theme of the satire part of it is in exposing the follies of placing one group in charge of politics that is no better than the last group was. (In the end the pigs were walking on 2 legs and the other animals couldn't tell the difference between them and when the humans were in charge...they were getting the same bad deal. \n\nOne particular folly that I think it points out is with the horse. The horse could represent the masses of people (or the proletariat)(or working class Americans or whatever nation) they do hold a lot of power and could actually make changes - if they could just figure it out...but their motto is "I will work harder" not "I will figure out what is broken and fix that" So they just go to work at the same old drudgery and don't help solve the problem...at one point though they show their true power and from what I remember the horse pins a pig down with his powerful hoof...\n\nI remember that the pigs are to represent Communism or a socialist form of government...I think Orson Wells is trying to show people that it isn't a good system, and he is exposing what is going on, but he is also demonstrating the folly as well, in that the masses cannot or will not learn even when someone is pointing it out to them...as he is pointing out to us in his book and what do the masses do about it? They say "I will work harder" now it takes 2 incomes to buy a home and raise a family in many areas...etc..etc...
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About the theme: Some critics contend that the theme of the story is that human perfection can only be achieved in death and therefore not reachable at all, in that the trademark foreshadowing occurred during Aylmer's dream, in which he can not cut deep enough to remove the birthmark.\n\nOther critics read the story as a critique of 19th century positivistic science (positivism) situating the woman as nature and representing science as attempting to penetrate her/its secrets while ultimately destroying the object of its research. Still others see it as a defence of vitalism as against materialism -- that one cannot find the essence or soul in mute bodily matter.\n\nCritics: Recent criticism has focused on Hawthorne's narrative voice, treating it as a self-conscious rhetorical construction, not to be conflated with Hawthorne's own voice. Such an approach complicates the long-dominant tradition of regarding Hawthorne as a gloomy, guilt-ridden moralist.
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According to SPARKNOTES, there's 3::\n\nParadoxes- \n\nIn the beginning of “The Hearth and the Salamander,” Montag’s bedroom is described first as “not empty” and then as “indeed empty,” because Mildred is physically there, but her thoughts and feelings are elsewhere. Bradbury’s repeated use of such paradoxical statements—especially that a character or thing is dead and alive or there and not there—is frequently applied to Mildred, suggesting her empty, half-alive condition. Bradbury also uses these paradoxical statements to describe the “Electric-Eyed Snake” stomach pump and, later, the Mechanical Hound. These paradoxes question the reality of beings that are apparently living but spiritually dead. Ultimately, Mildred and the rest of her society seem to be not much more than machines, thinking only what they are told to think. The culture of Fahrenheit 451 is a culture of insubstantiality and unreality, and Montag desperately seeks more substantial truths in the books he hoards.\n\nAnimal and Nature Imagery-\n\nAnimal and nature imagery pervades the novel. Nature is presented as a force of innocence and truth, beginning with Clarisse’s adolescent, reverent love for nature. She convinces Montag to taste the rain, and the experience changes him irrevocably. His escape from the city into the country is a revelation to him, showing him the enlightening power of unspoiled nature.\n\nMuch of the novel’s animal imagery is ironic. Although this society is obsessed with technology and ignores nature, many frightening mechanical devices are modeled after or named for animals, such as the Electric-Eyed Snake machine and the Mechanical Hound.\n\nReligion- \n\nFahrenheit 451 contains a number of religious references. Mildred’s friends remind Montag of icons he once saw in a church and did not understand. The language Bradbury uses to describe the enameled, painted features of the artifacts Montag saw is similar to the language he uses to describe the firemen’s permanent smiles. Faber invokes the Christian value of forgiveness: after Montag turns against society, Faber reminds him that since he was once one of the faithful, he should demonstrate pity rather than fury.\nThe narrative also contains references to the miracle at Canaa, where Christ transformed water into wine. Faber describes himself as water and Montag as fire, asserting that the merging of the two will produce wine. In the biblical story, Jesus Christ’s transformation of water into wine was one of the miracles that proved his identity and instilled faith in his role as the savior. Montag longs to confirm his own identity through a similar self-transformation.\n\nThe references to fire are more complex. In the Christian tradition, fire has several meanings: from the pagan blaze in which the golden calf was made to Moses’ burning bush, it symbolizes both blatant heresy and divine presence. Fire in Fahrenheit 451 also possesses contradictory meanings. At the beginning it is the vehicle of a restrictive society, but Montag turns it upon his oppressor, using it to burn Beatty and win his freedom.\n\nFinally, Bradbury uses language and imagery from the Bible to resolve the novel. In the last pages, as Montag and Granger’s group walk upriver to find survivors after the bombing of the city, Montag knows they will eventually talk, and he tries to remember appropriate passages from the Bible. He brings to mind Ecclesiastes 3:1, “To everything there is a season,” and also Revelations 22:2, “And on either side of the river was there a tree of life . . . and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations,” which he decides to save for when they reach the city. The verse from Revelations also speaks of the holy city of God, and the last line of the book, “When we reach the city,” implies a strong symbolic connection between the atomic holocaust of Montag’s world and the Apocalypse of the Bible.
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The poem itself is a metaphor of BDSM games and contains quite a few implied metaphors, almost one in every line:\n\n- Exquisite is the torment of my soul.\n Torture of a body is real, torture of a soul is metaphor\n\n- Always she brings me to the brink of insanity\n To the brink of a cliff is real\n\n- Yet at the last moment, she pulls me back.\n She pulls \n\n- My darkest fantasies fulfilled through her.\n Darkest fantasies\n\n- The searing pain cauterized by her dark passion.\n Searing pain cauterized\n Dark passion\n\n- Chains and whips her means to my end\n Means to my end\n \n- For like a succubus she is insatiable,\n Metaphor, but not implied\n\n- My bondage is her release.\n Release\n\n- My pain, her pleasure.\n Nothing here\n\n- We are the outlet for each others pain\n Outlet for pain\n\n- Two lost souls intertwining and screaming out in a unified voice\n  Lost souls, souls screaming\n\n- In each other’s darkness, we find peace.\n  Darkness\n\nWho is the author?
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Perhaps you can derive your story from the history of Joan of Arc.....or perhaps from the play Medea by Euripides (although Male, often referred to as the early feminist and ridiculed for his plays)