Poetic Justice
Poetic justice is a situation in a poem or story where characters receive outcomes that match their actions: kindness is rewarded, and wrongdoing is punished. The phrase can also suggest a satisfying moral balance in which events seem arranged with a sense of fairness, even if that fairness is dramatic rather than realistic.
Example
The thief who mocked the widow's door
returned at dawn with empty hands;
he found the food he stole before
had fed the very child who stands
and now refuses him a crust.
Related Definitions
[n] an outcome in which virtue triumphs over vice (often ironically)
Related Terms
ars poetica, defensibility, drumhead justice, dueness, equitableness, equity, evenhandedness, give-and-take, justice, justifiability, justifiableness, justification, justness, lawfulness, legality, measure for measure, meetness, nemesis, poetcraft, poetic