Adapted from "Irony and Sarcasm" by Roger Kreuz (MIT Press, 2020). Reprinted with permission from MIT Press. In February 1996, Alanis Morissette released the fourth single from “Jagged Little Pill,” ...

There is something special about the way irony tickles our brains. After all, we tend to enjoy a good surprise, or at least something that subverts our expectations. Fortunately, helpful people from ...

On September 18, 2001, Graydon Carter, the editor of Vanity Fair, declared, “I think it’s the end of the age of irony.” He was trashed for the sentiment. Only a month after the event, Michiko Kakutani ...

Two-hundred-something years ago, after the earnestly murderous trials of the French Revolution, irony appeared on the cobblestoned streets of Paris. Young aristocratic men called Incroyables took to ...

For example, criticisms of social media often exploit the inherent irony of the situation, pointing out that these platforms were designed to connect us, but are actually tearing us apart. Irony may ...

I COULD never, until recently, divest myself of the haunting feeling that being ironical had something to do with the entering of the iron into one’s soul. I thought I knew what irony was, and I ...