An absolute rebel born in Ireland. An excellent intelectual brain gifted with a sharp tongue. Hard not to laught at his witty sense of humour and wonder about his ideas. Meet Mr. Wilde and his world.

pondělí 26. března 2012

Any critical pieces?

Don't know if I should be feeling lucky or rather miserable. Well, searching for any critical piece about Wilde's play isn't that easy as it may seem at the beginning. It seems to me there's a huge essay business going out there. Literelly, I have found 2 pieces, excluding reviews of the book, in the end I will be grateful for so little to be found :P It's basically all the same - the same stuff all over again.

 To be clear from the start, there is not much to be said, only repetadly  stating all you already know.

The Importance of being Ernest has been kindly receinved from its premier in 1895, people of Victorian Era might have not properly understood Wilde's essential message or rather satyrical pinpointing of their life style.
In the first essay discussing Wilde's piece, I indeed liked the way the author writes about each character representing a certain ironic attitude of the society. The author nicely presents the play's real nature, such as the irony of its main topics: marriage, morality, intelligence, and the apperance versus its original meaning. Considering Algy and John, both of the living a way off the avarege, but never aprreciate the value of money, which are only a part of their inherintance. John symbolizes a case, when all people pretended to follow some sort of a code of morality, being earnest (nice, honest, ...) but to be true, he turns out to be a hypocrit, who makes up an alter-ego for ecusing his constant voyages to the city.

As another example the author takes Lady Bracknell represents the issue of apperances in the stucture of Victorian society. It was not important  to be inteligent whatsoever, it was porobably only useful to have some  wit in order to converse with others. Lady Brackenell belsses ignorance, and praises the social duty for adherence of given standards with a question. She stands agains education and speaks outl loud about the necessity  of submissivness and ignorance. Thanks to Lady Bracknell we may realize, that the upper class could not have enjoyed all the advatages and pompous life style, if the lower classs had recieves a firm education backgroud.


 "Each character is used to ridicule the state that society is in and morals that the Victorian era followed. Wilde is successful in satirizing Britian through sarcasm, wit and cynicism in the hopes of getting his opinion of society across." Wilde did manage to get his message across. I have encountered few ciriticism on the general plot of the play, however taking into account, the depth of his ideas portrayed in a simple plot, it could not have been done better. I believe there is no need to create an elaborate drama, if you wish to make people cry and laught at the same time. It would be rather disturbing to focus on the plot, with easy to imagine situation, human brain will actually absorb what is written between lines. Hopefully. 

Read more: http://bookstove.com/comedy/the-importance-of-being-earnest-essay/#ixzz1qFfOv9Ig

sobota 10. března 2012

Good guy? CHECK - Band guy? Gone with the Wind

It is always nice two have the good guy, the knight on the white horse, kicking ... the damn evil ..... (fill in by whatever character pops up in your mind). Old fairytales and even today's top shows suck if they are missing the good and evil, well at least for the majority of Earths' population. Gosh, we entirely indulge in drama so freaking much, sometimes I wonder whether being nuts actually means being normal.



     All would be great only if Wilde would have had created a distinctive antagonist. Sorry, nothing like this is happening in my play or to put it other way it is not that obvious. I will repeat myself (I need to get  points >D) and for this reason this comes:

     Wilde wholeheartedly opposed, revolted against Victorian high society, ironically he was one of them - already know that, right? Hence, one may deduce that Wilde's main antagonist will be disguised and one will have to dig deeper to see the real nature of the roles. In the Importance of being Earnest, the protagonist is undoubtedly Jack-Ernest, the knight in the polished armour, as the plot unfolds he is forced to face challenges posed by that time social norms as well as some human traits pocessed by his beloved Gwendolen, whose life dream is to marry someone named Ernest.

It is not clear, at least for me, what the primary motivation is. Jack wants to marry Gwendolen, needs to persuade her witchy mother obssessing over the future son-in-law background, then there is Alby escaping his social obligations such as getting married and at the same time "killing" his imaginary relative thanks to whom he could excuse himself from family reunions with his aunt - Gwendolen's mother.

The way I understand this bad/good guy situation, Wilde's characters are the protagonists and the world created by them, the society in which they live, resembles wearing a too tight dress and at the same time to be hardly able to breathe in it. But you still keep it on, because this dress looks so perfectly on you.

For instance Jack, who has to create his alter ego, Ernest, in order to get closer to Gwendolen, believing that this way she would fancy him a way more. Regardless how much it makes his life complicated, he keeps pretending - the cherry comes with the ending, but I won't spoil this immense fun :P

pondělí 5. března 2012

"We teach people how to remember, we never teach them how to grow."

This time I should introduce more or less Mr Wilde and his motives behind this particular piece, though I think I have done it partially in every single post before. Probably, it'd the best to simply tell you more about his life - briefly focusing on the intriguing stuff rather than on dull, hard-to-swallow info about his life time.

REMEMBER: an Irish playwright,  poet and an author of many novels and short stories. He was homosexual - unacceptable in his time society, hence he was imprisonned for awhile. You may found his grave in Paris where he exiled. During his life he was recognized as an ANARCHIST with a name associated with scandels and intrigues.

1. He came from an intellectual family - his mother also a playwright and a socialist organised countless intellectual reunions at their estate in Dublin. Wilde's father knighted for services to medicine

2. Attended Trinity College in Dublin, later accepetd ti Oxford after 2 years lost interessed in pursuing his studies at hte university and moved to London.

3. During his studies at Oxford, he was in particular popular due to his aesthetic and decadent movements - wore long hair and  openly dispiced manly sports, decorated his romm with peacock feathers, lillies, sunflowers and other objects of d'art.

4. Throughtout  the period of his life when he resided in  London,Wilde became famouse because he was famous - one of the early celebrities

5. Married - 2 sons

6. Homosexual - 2 years in jail

7. Never openly admitted any interest in politics, but generally supported the ideas of socialism.

Much of his work had to be influenced by his revolutionary orientated mother and intelectual father who had supported Wilde. Owning to his innate wit, lingusitic talent and hawk eyes he had the capacity to reasonably critisize and elegantly ridicule the Victorian society. Wilde could easily see through humans' surface and noctice the real nature of things.

For those who have found this post interesting and would like to learn more about Wilde's life.