Yes, I like Oedipus' speech there, too. But I do think the Dostoyevski scene meets the definition if stetched just a bit. The idea is that the audience realizes something that a character is not aware of. That information has been planted by the author into the text so that we will know we are supposed to be aware of something the characters or characters are not aware of.

What makes the Dostoyevski scene a bit tricky is there are characters who know this privileged information, too. However, we still feel the tension that dramatic irony arouses in the audience that has information a character doesn't possess. Dramatic irony causes that kind of restless feeling in which we want to intrude into the scene and tell the character (if it's a sympathetic one) what's going on. Oh, well. It' just my opinion, but there you go.

We covered situational irony today. I had searched for some examples over the Internet, and came across a very simple illustration of situation irony. I've forgotten the site. But here's the situation in a nutshell:

The situation involves your going to a fire station. Everything's spotless and ready to go. Those fire fighters are ready to go. Perfecto! Till you spot the substandard fire alarm--one that clearly is not up to the fire code. An easy definition--if not a very sophisticated one--is: The incongruity in a situation between what should be and what is.

I like that fire station example of situational irony because it's easy to remember. And it was an equally easy segue into our lesson today on "The Most Dangerous Game" where the central character, Rainsford, is offered the most lavish of hospitality on a Caribbean island only to realize that his generous host means to hunt him down and murder him: incongruity between the hospitality of the host and the final gesture of murdering the guest for sport.

I think situational irony and dramatic irony will be fairly easy concepts for my students to grasp once they've collected enough distinct examples of the two.