The Importance of Being Earnest is Wilde's most well-known play, yet it
has long been the most misunderstood. Far from being a mere absurd
farce, the play proves to be subversive as it not only deals strong blows
to the Victorian conformism, reversing gender conventions and satirising
the foibles of the age, but as it also parodies the literary conventions
of the time, at the dawn of modernism.
Wilde the Irishman infiltrates the snobbish British upper-class and
builds the figure of Jack Worthing the interloper who invents a doppelganger,
Ernest, to reflect on the very notion of identity which paradoxically
comes out of multiplicity. Baffling all expectations, the joyful
plot triggers a reflexion on the Supremacy of Art over Life, as fictive
lovers appear flesh and blood out of diaries, on the Truth of Masks, as
elaborate lies turn out to be true, and on the power of comic creativity,
all of which are key notions to grasp Wilde's aesthetic concern.
Providing with close readings of the text to analyse the Wildean poetics,
this book will offer a thorough discussion of the play with its
historical background, major issues and critical references.
