oscar wilde?

Question

How was Oscar Wilde beneficial in the comedy of manners?

Answer 1

Oscar Wilde's style EXEMPLIFIES comedy of manners!

CoM plays poke fun at a particular subsection of society by exaggerating their most stereotypical attributes. If you were creating a CoM about cheerleaders, you would pick the most stereotypical cheerleader qualities you could think of--maybe their perkiness? Their constant bouncing up and down? The fact that they spell things out?--and have your characters do that times ten. Your CoM cheerleaders would be THE perkiest, THE bounciest, THE spelling-est. You would make them so much larger than life that everyone would recognize who you were parodying...and why.

Wilde pokes fun at the upper classes of his time and place (turn of the last century England). You're reading "The Importance of Being Earnest," I assume? Look closely at Cecily, Lady Bracknell, and the rest of them. What kind of people are they? What are they concerned or obsessed with? (What do they talk and think about all day?) What are their greatest desires in life?

That's the part of his world Wilde was making fun of. It's funny, but it's also mean. His humor always has an edge to it--he doesn't want you to leave the theatre liking his characters (the antagonists, anyway), he wants you to think they're shallow and silly.

Of course, in his day, the people he makes fun of are the very people who went to see his plays. Ironic, no? And dangerous. Wilde was jailed for his hard-hitting depictions of the world in which he lived--there were a lot of people who didn't care to see themselves reflected in the stuff he wrote.

Answer 2

I would suggest that Wilde's contribution to the traditional "comedy of manners" was the satirical manner in which he mercilessly SKEWERS the pretences of the so-called "upper classes," showing them to be largely uneducated, short-sighted, and foolish.

Answer 3

Read "The Importance of Being Earnest."

Trivial things like cucumber sandwiches and diaries are important, while missing babies and marriage are of minor importance to these characters :)

trust me, you will like it! hilarious, i was in it as cecily a few years ago.