Earnest is also a satire because it makes fun of its characters - most of whom are members of the aristocratic class. Think about how proud Lady Bracknell is,. Read more
Dualism in Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest
Richard Foster states that The Importance of Being Earnest has a "multivalent nature"[6] and thus implies that a farce or comedy of manners are not particularly urbane genres and are therefore 'unsuitable' for The Importance of Being Earnest..
Critical essays on the importance of being earnest
Oscar Wilde frames "The Importance of Being Earnest" around the paradoxical epigram, a skewering metaphor for the play's central theme of division of truth and identity that hints at a homosexual subtext. Other targets of Wilde's absurd yet.
The importance of being earnest critical essay
Paglia, Camille. "The English Epicene: Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest." In Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 6995. A scintillating, provocative study of Wilde's marketing of the 6895's lifestyle. Discusses the extroverted, audience-pleasing aspects of Wilde's play.
The main characters of the play are John Worthing and Algernon Moncrieff. Both men used the name Ernest to avoid embarrassing and awkward social conventions and obligations. Of course, it caused a great number of funny misunderstandings. Oscar Wilde wrote his play according to the norms of aestheticism. He used this style to protest against the moral values of the Victorian era. Wilde said that important and serious things should be treated with the slight humor. He tried to break the practical and sensible approach towards life in his society.
If Wilde&rsquo s play takes aim at the society that persuades itself that it is virtuous and right-thinking while in reality being cold, harsh, and self-serving, it also celebrates the human ingenuity that allows people to make of themselves what they will and to enter imaginatively into another frame of reference or reality, a world in which wit and artifice are paramount. These, after all, are the qualities of which an audience is most aware, having been alternately amused, provoked, and delighted, when it leaves the theater at the end of the evening.
Here on Enotes you can read up on satire and how Wilde uses it as a literary device by going to The Importance of Being Earnest study guide and selecting "style". A satire is the mockery of.
