La proyección del dandysmo de Wilde en sus comedias

Abstract

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.