I. Form/Content

Separable in discourse but not in instance.

What content and form are not: body and dress. That is, content does not “preexist” form; nor does form “embody” content. The two are co-creative.

What content and form are (schematically):

Using form and content in literary analysis:

Consider how form and content might be congruent—does a novel’s unreliable narration relate a plot in which characters don’t trust each other?—or at odds—does a poem’s tight construction belie its theme that the heart is ungovernable?

II. Irony

Arises from mismatch, and therefore from division/non-unity.

Verbal irony is a mismatch between what is said and what is meant;

Situational irony, between what is thought to be the case and what really is the case;

Dramatic irony, between the perspective of a character and the perspective of the audience.

Using irony in literary analysis:

You can look for instances of situational irony where the mismatch is between what you the reader expect and what the text delivers. Consider how the expectation is formed, how the text thwarts it, and why it might seem to aim for this effect. You can also look for ways in which an instance of irony might be resolved in a different frame. In the example poem described above, could the seeming incongruence between form (high structure) and content (unruly emotions) be illustrating the unpredictability of the heart’s ways, or how the heart in love is single of purpose despite all cause for wariness?

Note: The technique demonstrated in the reading of the hypothetical poem is characteristic of New Criticism, an early–twentieth-century movement in literary criticism. Criticism has come a long way since then, but the analytical categories discussed above, and their intertwining, can still yield insight.