Mrs Erlynne, Forms, Functions and Figures of Negation in Oscar Wilde’s Society Comedies
Negation appears in Wilde’s four society comedies in various ways. Prejudiced high-society members emphatically resist the advent of a mixed, open society, a refusal which is tapped for its dramatic potential. Others, mostly outcasts or adventurers, but also inside outsiders, resent society as it is...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Presses Universitaires de la Méditerranée
2010-12-01
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| Series: | Cahiers Victoriens et Edouardiens |
| Online Access: | http://journals.openedition.org/cve/2714 |
| Summary: | Negation appears in Wilde’s four society comedies in various ways. Prejudiced high-society members emphatically resist the advent of a mixed, open society, a refusal which is tapped for its dramatic potential. Others, mostly outcasts or adventurers, but also inside outsiders, resent society as it is and bring chaos in this outwardly well-ordered, but basically corrupted and hypocritical cosmos. Their ironical and iconoclastic stances boil down to the polemic negation of values, to arouse laughter but more profoundly to assess their relevance. Negation is thus resorted to with a view to reactivating a consensual subtext, subverting it and questioning its truth value, thus giving more width and scope to these light and apparently superficial comedies. |
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| ISSN: | 0220-5610 2271-6149 |