문화 텍스트로서의 『진지해지는 것의 중요성』

The Importance of Being Earnest as a Cultural Text.

Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest which is now widely recognized as one of the finest comedies in English has a perfect union of plot, character and style. One of the striking study is to interpret it in terms of cultural point of view. Culture is recognized as a complex and various social elements such as artifacts, behaviors, and values. In short culture is defined as a way of life. The cultural features of The Importance of Beings Earnest is closely connected with characters' way of life such as searching for materials, feigned name, and false value systems. It furnishes a good pretext for escaping responsibility in the guise of fulfilling one's responsibility to a fictitious younger brother. Bunburying means to invent a fictitious character, who can serve as a pretext for escaping social routine. Mistaken identity is associated with the mask of manners that comic characters tend to assume. They have no identities of their own. In this play identity is not a matter of authenticity or origin but surface, appearance, style. So The Importance of Being Earnest is centered on the name of Ernest which symbolized the comic drive toward stability and the life deception. In conclusion Wilde criticizes the conventions of his society by his witty dialogue which consisted of wild nonsense, paradox and invented logic. In a sense he is a rebel against Victorian life. So he seemed to be faithful to mirror his society through his play as a cultural text.