Readings on the Importance of Being Earnest

by Siebold, Thomas; Wilde, Oscar

• ISBN13: 9780737705607
• ISBN10: 0737705604
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2000-09-01
• Publisher: Greenhaven Pr

Summary

This witty play is considered Oscar Wilde's greatest dramatic achievement.

Table of Contents

Foreword	11	(13)
Introduction	13	(2)
A Biography	15	(20)
Oscar Wilde
Characters and Plot	35	(9)
Wilde's Use of Language in The Importance of Being Earnest
The Importance of Being Earnest as a Verbal Opera	44	(7)
Alan Bird
The Importance of Being Earnest is like a verbal opera: Wilde uses clever dialogue like operatic arias, relegating some dramatic elements to secondary status. Also like opera, the plot hinges on secrets and schemes
The Play's World of Linguistic Pleasure	51	(6)
Julia Prewitt Brown
The characters in the play are beyond the determinism of the past; they wander in a linguistic world where no one sacrifices or suffers. Whereas the characters in Victorian novels often learn to bear suffering, the characters in Wilde's play learn to ``bear'' pleasure
Wilde as a Master Epigrammist	57	(8)
Francesca Coppa
Oscar Wilde is a master epigrammist and the Importance of Being Earnest is an epigrammatic play. Wilde cites and reworks established knowledge, allowing audience members to share his position of authority
Wilde's Painstaking Writing Process	65	(9)
Russell Jackson
Wilde was a careful craftsman who revised his work meticulously. The Importance of Being Earnest omits many of the stock characters and the overall decadent tone that distinguished his earlier work
Bunbury Sources	74	(9)
William Green
Wilde was fascinated with names, often using place names, attributive names, or names of people whom he knew in his work. ``Bunbury'' refers to two actual individuals known to Wilde
The Language of the Dandy	83	(8)
Patricia Flanagan Behrendt
In The Importance of Being Earnest Wilde adroitly renders the language of the dandy, which is both penetratingly humorous and highly aggressive. It is the language that manipulates viewers into laughing at topics and situations that they would not normally find inherently funny
Characterization in The Importance of Being Earnest
Duplicity in The Importance of Being Earnest	91	(6)
Joseph Bristow
In The Importance of Being Earnest things are never what they seem: Characters have double lives, the city and the country represent two different sets of values, and the ritual of eating contrasts the propriety of high society and sexual desire
Speranza: The Mother Figure in The Importance of Being Earnest	97	(8)
Patrick M. Horan
Wilde's portrayal of a mother figure in the play captures the dualistic nature of his own mother, Speranza. Lady Bracknell represents Speranza's conventional side while Miss Prism represents her artistic side
Marriage and Women	105	(9)
Sos Eltis
In his extensive revision of the Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde made Gwendolen and Cecily more confident, stylish, and determined. Moreover, in the final version of the play the sexes are equally balanced and marriage is viewed with much less cynicism
The Importance of Being Earnest and Social Masks	114	(11)
Norbert Kohl
The comedy in The Importance of Being Earnest stems from the unexpected contrast between the seriousness of situations and the trivial, superficial responses of the characters to those situations. Throughout the play the characters replace an anticipated emotional involvement with severe intellectual detachment
Philosophy, Themes, and Meaning in The Importance of Being Earnest
Wilde's Attack on Seriousness	125	(7)
Philip K. Cohen
In The Importance of Being Earnest Wilde creates a fairy tale atmosphere in which harsh realities are transformed by laughter and even suffering and death are robbed of their power
The Importance of Being Earnest as an Anglo-Irish Parable	132	(8)
Declan Kiberd
The role of the double in The Importance of Being Earnest reflects the strained, symbiotic relations between England and Ireland
The Philosophy of the Dandy	140	(12)
Arthur Ganz
Wilde embraces an attitude toward life called dandyism. The dandy is a self-absorbed, intense individualist who rejects both the content and moral standards of middle-class society
Wilde's Vision of Nothingness	152	(9)
David Parker
In his farce, Wilde contemplates a vision of nothingness in which identity and the structures, values, and morals of society melt into insubstantiality. Truth, like identity, becomes an individual act of imagination built on a proliferation of deceptive and contradictory impressions
Genre and Structure in The Importance of Being Earnest
Wilde's Use of Ironic Counterpoint	161	(6)
Eric Bentley
Wilde takes potshots at the problems of society but never really crosses into satire or harsh criticism. Throughout the play Wilde maintains an ironic counterpoint between the outward elegance and assuredness of the characters and their inner emptiness
The Tedium of The Importance of Being Earnest	167	(4)
Mary McCarthy
Wilde imposes his opinions on the audience and his outrageous characters become monotonous. Repeated jokes, stock characters, and paradoxical humor become tedious
The Importance of Being Earnest as Self-Parody	171	(7)
Christopher S. Nassaar
In The Importance of Being Earnest Wilde parodies his earlier works, reducing their intellectual content to harmless absurdity
Chronology	178	(2)
For Further Research	180	(2)
Index	182