Analysis of Oscar Wildes The Picture of Dorian Gray or The Importance Research Paper

Analysis of Oscar Wildes The Picture of Dorian Gray or The Importance of Being Earnest - query Paper ExampleWeb. A modern review of Lady Bracknell includes interviews with women and men who have flowed the most formidable character in Earnest. I allow use this article to show how Earnest has accumulated meaning over time. Gagnier, Regenia. Idylls of the Marketplace Oscar Wilde and the Victorian Public. Stanford University Press Stanford, 1986. Print. This book dialog about the truth of Earnest, which will furnish a different angle to my discussion of expectations both internal and external to the play. It also talks about the popular reaction to Wildes downfall, shortly after the play opened, which will be of use as my paper will examine not only Earnest but also its playwright. Gillespie, Michael Patrick. Oscar Wilde and the Poetics of Ambiguity. Gainesville University Press Florida, 1996. Print. Gillespies book talks about Earnest in terms of expectations contemporary expectat ions of Wilde, of young men, and of the play genre. This is something I would like to investigate further, and with this books help I will show how analyse triviality and Wildes reputation interacted with expectation in Earnest. Kohl, Norbert. Oscar Wilde The Works of a Conformist Rebel. Trans. David Henry Wilson. Cambridge Cambridge University Press, 1989. Print. The chapter on Earnest begins by declaring that before its first opening, auditory senses expected that Wildes radical play would offer the very opposite of what was promised by the stolid-sounding title. I find this interplay between title, content and expectation very interesting with Earnest, was Wilde subverting expectations or life-time up to them? Prewitt Brown, Julia. Cosmopolitan Criticism Oscar Wildes Philosophy of Art. Virginia Virginia University Press, 1997. Print. Prewitt Brown argues that Earnest reflects the national myth of the century, that an orphan can achieve great things in go against of uncertai n origins. I will use her examples to ask whether Earnest was at all trivial, or if Wildes calculated superficiality is little more than a veneer. Sweet, Matthew. Inventing the Victorians. capital of the United Kingdom Faber & Faber, 2002. Print. Sweets book offers a comprehensive new look at the Victorian era, and is very useful for subverting our expectations of Wildes time. I will use this book to help piss the background for my paper, placing us in Wildes world rather than a modern misconception of Victorian Britain. Taylor, George. Players and Performances in the Victorian Theatre. Manchester Manchester University Press, 1989. Print. In this book George Taylor looks at Victorian dramatic event as a whole, examining how actors felt about their art. I hope to use this as a standard of expectation and seriousness by which to compare Earnest. Expectations of, and Undermined triviality in, The Importance of Being Earnest The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wildes last play and penultimate piece of literature before his untimely death in 1900, is important in the life of its playwright because it was first performed in 1895, just a few short months before Wilde was sentenced to two years hard labor in prison house for his homosexual liaisons. The play is part of Wildes carefully cultivated persona as a dandy, creating a tone of studied triviality which was lapped up by an audience engaged in a continuous search for bigger and better thrills