The Importance of Being Earnest, Act II - Oscar Wilde (1895)
Text commentary - 3 pages - Literature
'As a man sow, so shall he reap': a biblical saying that Miss Prism, as a good Christian, must have been taught at church. But to feel righteous, it is not enough to utter it as she does when reacting to the tidings of Jack's brother's death, it also takes to apply it personally....
The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde (1890) - Psychological mechanisms of dissociation and projection
Text commentary - 2 pages - Literature
Throughout the novel The Picture of Dorian Grey, it becomes clear that Dorian Gray's psychological well-being becomes compromised with every negative thing that happens within his life. To make matters worse, the majority of his issues stem from actions that he has consciously taken, making him...
The picture of Dorian Grey - Oscar Wilde (1890) - Do the seeds of Dorian Gray's destruction ultimately lie in Dorian's self-hatred?
Text commentary - 1 pages - Literature
From the beginning of the novel, Dorian portrays the essence of male beauty and youth. Basil is taken aback by the perfection in Dorian's appearance. Lord Henry is friends with Basil. Basil is hesitant for Lord Henry to be introduced to Dorian. Basil knows the ways of Lord Henry and is well...
Oscar Wilde and Martin Luther King: "Life is never fair"
Essay - 1 pages - Educational studies
Oscar Wilde once wrote "Life is never fair... And perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not." With this quote, Wilde meant to suggest that a life that is "fair" may become too boring, predictable, and simply bland. Often, the unfairness in life is what makes...
An analysis of "The Importance of Being Earnest" by Oscar Wilde
Book review - 2 pages - Arts and art history
The ‘importance of being Earnest' is a play written in an English setting, presenting Jack Worthing as the main protagonist (Wilde act 1). In line with Elinor Fuche's ‘visit to a small planet', it is not just enough to plainly go through a play without digging deep into it.
Oscar Wilde & the Unwritten Melodrama
Thesis - 4 pages - Literature
Victorian melodrama not only served as a literary genre, but it was used to define and reflect on the values of society. Oscar Wilde's Lady Windermere's Fan takes the expectation of contemporary melodrama, as defined by Peter Brooks. Though the play is based on melodrama and, at...
The Picture of Dorian Gray: Oscar Wilde
Book review - 2 pages - Literature
I chose to read the Picture of Dorian Gray because I was already semi familiar with the story and numerous friends recommended it to me. This famous novel takes place in nineteenth century England and revolves around the high society of that time and place. There is a supernatural aspect to this...
Homoerotic Desire in Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray
Book review - 4 pages - Literature
“What if someone wrote a novel about homosexuality and no body [sic] came?” Ed Cohen writes of Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray (75). Actually, at the time the book was written, the term “homosexuality” was nonexistent. Wilde, himself, became one...
Oscar Wilde and Aestheticism
Thesis - 9 pages - Philosophy
The 19th Century in Europe, and especially in England, is marked by the appearances of new artistic movements. Aestheticism is one the most important because it embodies a real change in the mentality and in art, considered as self sufficient. Immanuel Kant is one of the pioneers of it, and...
Humour and Nonsense
Presentation - 1 pages - Philosophy
My presentation will deal with the theme writer in his society. Writers usually criticize their society by literature to show people that things need to be changed such as those in Victorian Society. But how do writers by using humour and nonsense in their literature manage to criticize the...
Identity Construction in Ibsen's 'Hedda Gabler' and Wilde's 'The Importance of Being Earnest'
Essay - 3 pages - Literature
Both Henrik Ibsen's 'Hedda Gabler' and Oscar Wilde's 'The Importance of Being Earnest' depict the constant conflict between the individual and the society in which they live; and, more specifically, the struggle of the individual to construct his or her own identity...
Civilization
Course material - 47 pages - Culture, religion & civilization
No empire other than Great Britain brought to its colonies the technological tools (railroads, modern medicine) and the political ideals (capitalism, the rule of law) that made possible the development of stable and egalitarian societies. This explains why 54 nations, most of them former British...
Caliban: Then and Now
Case study - 2 pages - Literature
One of Shakespeare's strangest characters, Caliban is a monster who represents several concepts from slavery to Imperialism. Oscar Wilde even uses Caliban as a possible definition for 19th century ideals. He is such an effective character that he has appeared in many shapes and...
The Truth About Keats' Grecian Urn
Case study - 4 pages - Literature
In Sidney's A Defense on Poesy, poetry is “an art of imitation.” Granted, Sidney's definition does imply poetry serving as a mirror to a reality, and to imitate is to replicate something in closest form, in mimesis. To simply strike the possibility of poetry stemming from any sort of...
The Implications of Expectation
Thesis - 4 pages - Social, moral & civic education
The essence of comedy is widely debated but, as Umberto Eco emphasizes, with little success: “the uneasiness manifested by those who have theorized on the comic inclines us to think that the Comic must be somehow connected with uneasiness.” It may be more meaningful and productive to...
Butterfly or Bumblebee?: The Sting of Satire in The Importance of Being Earnest
Thesis - 5 pages - Literature
Oscar Wilde said that his play, The Importance of Being Earnest, subtitled “A Serious Comedy for Trivial People” was “written by a butterfly for butterflies” (qtd. in Stokes 115). Although this statement may be true, the subject of the play itself, while treated...
Speech acts
Essay - 10 pages - Linguistics & languages
In the present research, the researcher will examine 13 main points, each of which will be followed by other subtitles. Throughout these headlines and subtitles, speech acts are going to be investigated in terms of three main stages. The first stage is about Austin's first dichotomy which...
Spaces and Exchanges - To What Extent is Leaving One's Country an Enriching Experience?
Essay - 2 pages - Philosophy
I'm going to talk about the notion of Spaces and Exchanges. All societies are defined by geographical and symbolic spaces and how they open up these spaces to what lies farther away. The notion refers to all the movements and communications between different countries through culture,...
Absinthe
Essay - 6 pages - Journalism
Have you ever read Poe's, Maupassant's or Hemingway's works, examined Van Gogh's, Picasso's, Toulouse-Lautrec's or Manet's paintings, or even studied Baudelaire's, Rimbaud's or Wilde's pieces of art? Chances are you have, which means that you have also tasted the effects of la fée verte,...
Reginald Rose biography
Thesis - 4 pages - Literature
Understanding Reginald Rose's life goes a long way toward understanding the recurring themes within his work. Indeed, most biographies on Rose focus almost exclusively on his work. Considering how prolific of a writer he was, it is safe to say that in many respects his life and his work were...
Shylock: A Shakespearian scarface
Thesis - 3 pages - Literature
There's no doubt about it, bad guys are more interesting than good guys. In dramas catering to mass audiences every hero is set within a strict moral rubric. We know what to expect from him. The villains are the wild cards. In the typical Hollywood blockbuster they have meatier lines, they get to...
Art and globalization
Thesis - 21 pages - Arts and art history
"Art always has been and always will be important to humans", says Cynthia Freeland, professor of philosophy at the Houston University. This sentence, announced as a universal truth, shows that art remains strongly essential for human beings. It is also assured that everybody knows the importance...
Are You Randy? Double Entendres as Fictional Names
Case study - 2 pages - Literature
From the Bond girls called Pussy Galore and Xenia Onatopp, to Master Bates of Dickens' Oliver Twist, there is no lack of double entendres in modern or classic fiction, and analysis shows that they fall into two distinct categories: overtly erotic and didactic. How and why each author, playwright,...
Decadence and Modernity
Essay - 10 pages - Arts and art history
The Decadent movement, located in France and in England during the late 19th century, can most basically be described as a stylistic transition in literature between the pervasive Romanticism of the 1800s, the Naturalism that followed it, and Modernism. As art moved away from the romantic and...
Victorian Gothic literature
Thesis - 5 pages - Literature
All was dark and silent, the black shadows thrown by the moonlight seeming full of a silent mystery of their own. Not a thing seemed to be stirring, but all to be grim and fixed as death or fate; so that a thin streak of white mist, that crept with almost imperceptible slowness across the grass...
The Irish literature
Thesis - 9 pages - Literature
Who is Irish, who are the Irish, what makes an Irish writer Irish? Why does he/she have to be Irish, follow and become part of some tradition, this question of who/what is Irish runs parallel to whom and what is ‘I'? I can stand for identity in that it is I the writer (a writer, not this...
Commentary upon Mary Shelley's statement: "What terrified me will terrify others"
Essay - 5 pages - Literature
In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, the Creature in itself is not what is the most terrifying. Indeed, in her dream and in the novel afterwards, if Doctor Frankenstein is afraid at the sight of his creature, it is also its coming to life which creates fear: how can an amount of bones, skin,...
The Yellow Bird - Tennessee Williams (1947) - The modernist short story, the figure of the writer
Text commentary - 5 pages - Literature
The modernist movement has its origins in the growing industrialization of the late nineteenth century, which profoundly transformed traditional ways of life and the individual's relationship to society. This period was marked by a questioning of artistic values and conventions, reflecting a...
Medieval Renewal: The Pre-Raphaelites' Quest for the Holy Grail and Arthurian Legends
Essay - 6 pages - Philosophy
The Holy Grail is usually considered to be the cup from which Christ drank at the Last Supper and the one used by Joseph of Arimathea to catch his blood as he hung on the cross. This significance was introduced into the Arthurian legends. In earlier sources and in some later ones, the Grail is...
Essay on Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead
Essay - 4 pages - Literature
William Shakespeare is among the most notable playwrights of all time. Some of his works have been so popular that they have been turned into modern movies, aimed at attracting a new generation to this author's works. While Shakespeare has been able to provide audiences with theatrical...
