Oscar Wilde remained for a long while on the frontier of modernity. A romantic projection of the author's own self, which is made
evident in his literary production, prevented him from crossing that
frontier until he wrote his last comedy. It is on this basis that I study
the influence of Wilde's dandiacal attitudes on his society comedies,
and intend to give an account of the positive process leading from the
rather incongruous Lady Windermere's Fan, A Woman of No Importance and An Ideal Husband towards that lucid portrait of dandyism
entitled The Importance of Being Earnest. It is also the aim of this
article to bring out the peculiar relationship existing between dandyism
and bourgeois society.
