The Significance of Literature: ‘The Importance of Being Earnest.
This item explains the significance of “being” on literature, a brief discussion of what is the purpose of the self being in Wilde´s book. The author associate Jack-Earnest to literature saying that this character represents fiction because he was the one who creates his own fictitious story. There is an interesting fact in this article; the main character suffered a paradox, one in which can be found in written texts. The heterological word and autological word paradox, which explain that somethings can only be what it is on condition that it is what it is not and vice versa. For example, the word “short” is short, English is an English word in English Language, though, the word “long” is not as long as is written. These words are divided in two, the descriptive (heterological) and non-descriptive (autological) words, both of them share the same condition of ambiguity. That is why this paradox summarizes the whole plot of this play, Earnest did not believe in himself even when he was talking with the truth all the time. However, he did not realize about his real name until he check for the literature. He discovers his truth with the family books (literature) with his name written inside (self being), for this reason Joel Fineman compares Earnest with the literature of the self-writing and the self who reads it. This character describes everything literature should have in Joel’s perspective.