What's the difference between allegory and irony?

Allegory


Definition:

  • (n.) A figurative sentence or discourse, in which the principal subject is described by another subject resembling it in its properties and circumstances. The real subject is thus kept out of view, and we are left to collect the intentions of the writer or speaker by the resemblance of the secondary to the primary subject.
  • (n.) Anything which represents by suggestive resemblance; an emblem.
  • (n.) A figure representation which has a meaning beyond notion directly conveyed by the object painted or sculptured.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Byatt said that, while she had not wished to present an allegory or a polemic, the story was impelled by a profound sense of gloom about the environment and indeed about all human endeavours.
  • (2) But the bedeviled foray also works as a potent allegory on the slow, vice-like workings of conscience, as guilt hunts down the protagonists with the shrieking remorselessness of Greek furies.
  • (3) Christians believed, and believe, that the body is not only physical, but also spiritual and mystical, and many believed it was an allegory of church, state and family.
  • (4) In a country addicted to novelty and invention, he was proceeding to supply an instant lore of allegory, myth and fable.
  • (5) They had become an allegory for unhappy love, a foreshadow of Romeo and Juliet set in the Hindu Kush .
  • (6) Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘Macabre allegory’: Otto Dix’s The Triumph of Death (1934).
  • (7) Heavy with symbolism, analytical rather than dramatic, it attempts nothing less than an allegory of colonialism and apartheid, one that dares to linger in complexity."
  • (8) But even more than this bravura dramatic writing, the story of Dr Rieux's selfless struggle with the illness, and the different responses of other citizens, colleagues and chance acquaintances, unfolds an urgent allegory of war.
  • (9) Their music has long been free of such unnecessary clutter as metaphor, allegory, and poetic conceit.
  • (10) Bamba Issa took its inspiration from a Disney comic book, Donald Duck and The Magic Hourglass , which UFO felt was “an allegory for capitalism, its arrogance and shortcomings”.
  • (11) Could we fight back against a world ruled by men?” Facebook Twitter Pinterest Armed with a brush … Self-portrait as the Allegory of Painting, by Gentileschi.
  • (12) So he positively enjoyed draping what is, in fact, a chilling allegory of paternal possessiveness and pseudo-scientific fanaticism, in the gaudy fabric of a "romance", just as the author pretends, in his pseudo-preface, to have discovered it among the works of "M de l'Aubépine" (French for "haw-thorn").
  • (13) The Double , it's said, is meant as an allegory: the straight man is Dostoevsky in real life, shy and often awkward; the arriviste is the author 2.0, the person he sometimes wished he was, who is quick-witted and irresistible to women.
  • (14) The sociology, the anthropology, the communication is so important, not like the veterinary or the wildlife or medical sciences," he told IRIN, explaining that epidemiological facts have to be translated in simple ways for ordinary people to understand, by using local allegories for instance.
  • (15) The film, like some of the original Apes movies, mixes intellect and allegory with adventure and special effects.
  • (16) They approached the cold war as melodrama and McCarthyism by way of allegory.
  • (17) Another way of reading it could be as an allegory about the self-destructive consequences of women's obsession with shaving.
  • (18) Clearly it is not so much a kiss he is portraying as an ecstatic allegory of all the copulations he can remember or imagine.
  • (19) She experimented towards the end, not always successfully, with symbol and allegory, and but for her success as a novelist would have been remembered as a great master of the short-story genre, which she always defended for its concentration, integrity and lack of compromise.
  • (20) Somehow the people who create television failed to create television, I believe Erin put it best when she referenced Plato's Allegory of the Cave – a very quick read if you would like to make this evening worthwhile.

Irony


Definition:

  • (a.) Made or consisting of iron; partaking of iron; iron; as, irony chains; irony particles.
  • (a.) Resembling iron taste, hardness, or other physical property.
  • (n.) Dissimulation; ignorance feigned for the purpose of confounding or provoking an antagonist.
  • (n.) A sort of humor, ridicule, or light sarcasm, which adopts a mode of speech the meaning of which is contrary to the literal sense of the words.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) And the irony of it is it doesn't interest me at all.
  • (2) The irony of this type of self-manipulation is that ultimately the child, or adult, finds himself again burdened by impotence, though it is the impotence of guilt rather than that of shame.
  • (3) The irony is that we have more media than ever before, but less insight.
  • (4) Richard Aylard, director of sustainability and external affairs for Thames Water, said the firm was aware of the irony that heavy rain had set in after the hosepipe ban was announced.
  • (5) One of the terrible ironies of the Iraq War is that President Bush used the threat of nuclear terrorism to invade a country that had no active nuclear program.
  • (6) That he was able to keep his secret treasures here, not in some remote corner of the globe but in the centre of the city that gave birth to the National Socialist movement, is both extraordinary and not short of a certain dark irony.
  • (7) He is wary of pretension, alive to all shades of irony.
  • (8) There was a thing at the time that said basically: 'Oh, the working classes obviously don't understand this is irony, so Harry's had to kill him off.'
  • (9) But the character – compounded of piercing sanity and existential despair, infinite hesitation and impulsive action, self-laceration and observant irony – is so multi-faceted, it is bound to coincide at some point with an actor’s particular gifts.
  • (10) The irony of her image being exchanged in return for commodities in the future,” she said, “seems to recall the way that actual slaves’ bodies were serving as currencies of exchange.” Larson arrived at a different conclusion about the honor.
  • (11) In the end, though, practical rethinkers have to get beyond the delights of irony and paradox in which Glasman too often wraps himself.
  • (12) There is a perverse irony that people who have cracked their iPhones are now being targeted by hackers.
  • (13) The irony of this is that today, when I was getting all of this horrible antisemitic shit that I’ve only ever seen in Russia, I was reminded that 26 years ago today my family came to the US from Russia.
  • (14) The irony is an uncomfortable one for policymakers.
  • (15) Because of our slightly younger average age and city location, we were supposedly one of the "new wave" WIs that had started springing up in the years before – groups that rejected crochet and did more modern activities, often with more than a tinge of irony.
  • (16) White House officials said that Obama, who was planning to work on the final draft of his speech on his flight from Washington to Oslo, would directly address the issue of the irony of being awarded the peace prize while escalating the war.
  • (17) Labour's pensions spokesman, Gregg McClymont, said: "The irony is that there are lots of good pension schemes out there that are being undermined by what is going on.
  • (18) She is being helpful, no doubt about that, but there is an unconscious note of power play – not to mention the sweet irony of my having provoked her into pulling not one but two phones out of her bag within seconds of us sitting down.
  • (19) "The irony of welcoming to the London 2012 Olympic Games an individual who is alleged to have led an organised and brutal repression of athletes because they peacefully exercised their internationally recognised right to freedom of expression and association during Bahrain's Arab Spring would be a blow to all athletes around the world, and irreconcilable with the UK commitment to human rights and claimed support to peaceful pro-democracy movements," the ECCHR said.
  • (20) A h, the irony of white people complaining about being interrupted by black people.