OSCAR WILDE (1854-1900) The Importance of Being Earnest

Introduction: Wilde, Lord Alfred Douglas, and the Trials

 Broadest Significance of the Play?
Critique of the British Establishment
+The class system: uses immunity of leisured,
aristocratic classes (dandy) to critique middle classes (bourgeoisie)
+The Church and sacraments
+Respectable education, popular literature
+Relations between the sexes

Comic Conventions and Techniques?
--Venerable themes of comic theater BUT
--Invites expectations; then undercuts them
+Master and servant (1699/1762)
+Conserving upper-class power against middle-class mobility (1708-10/1771-73; 1738/1803)
+Sanctity of Church rituals (1717-18/1781)
+Heterosexual courtship (1722-23/1786-87)

Ernest (Jack's) and Bunbury (Algy's)
--Earnestness and the play of language
--Which come first, signs or their referents (the things to which they refer)?
["Do you wish to love? Use Love's Litany, and the words will create the yearning from which the world fancies that they spring."--Critic as Artist ]
--Literal and figurative; or the power of words to mean something other than what they seem to say (1725/1789, 1726-27/1790)
--"Ernest" as a floating sign (1702/1765; 1706-07/1769-70; 1728-29/92-93)
--The impossibility of pure and simple truth 1703/1766: "The truth is rarely pure and never simple"

Who or what is Bunbury?

 Conclusion
--Ending at the Beginning
--The sign (Earnest/Ernest) finds its referent (Jack), or the referent (Jack W) finds his true sign: the name of his father (Ernest John Moncrieff) and his proper relation to his brother (Algernon Moncrieff)?
--The death of Bunbury 1733/1797.