Theme Of Irony In Medea

I have been told you learn something new every day, and today I definitely learned something. Did you know that John Milton went blind at age forty four in 1652? The most likely source is glaucoma, affecting Milton many years prior to his permanent blindness. Well, now that I’ve established Milton was literally blind in reality, this helps readers understand his other blindness he refers to in Book III of Paradise Lost. In his second invocation during this poem, Milton prays symbolically that the Muses—which he likens to the Holy Spirit—come into him and infuse within him divine knowledge. Since Milton thinks of light both as heavenly insight and actual light, he’s essentially asking God to enter into his heart, his being, and absolve him

One Greek tragedy full of irony is Euripides’ Medea. It is ironic that Jason remarries Glauce to improve his status but instead ended up with nothing at the end of play, and though King Aegeus was sterile, Medea was able to create and execute a ploy that was clearly productive while staying at his palace. Euripides employs verbal irony when Medea fakes compassion towards Jason and Glauce but really intends to keep her original plans to kill her children. There’s dramatic irony in the fact that everyone is aware of Medea’s plan to poison Glauce, but Jason unquestioningly and unknowingly delivers the poisoned items to his wife while thinking that Medea has truly come to her senses. Situational irony is seen in the ambivalent emotions Medea displays throughout the play: she’s incredibly vindictive and resolved to extract revenge on Jason, but she also struggles with remorse and uncertainty about the prospect of murdering her children to get back at him. Lastly, when the chorus says that the will of the gods is inexplicable, it’s ironic for modern-day readers that, as brilliant as ancient Greeks were, they used many deities to explain the result of human