Miss

See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/259576716

Dying and Restoration in Oscar Wild's The

Importance of Being Earnest and Wole

Soyinka's The Lion And The Jewel

Article · November 2013

READS

283

3 authors, including:

Amechi Akwanya

Emeka Chukwumezie

University of Nigeria

University of Nigeria

43 PUBLICATIONS 1 CITATION

1 PUBLICATION 0 CITATIONS

SEE PROFILE

All in-text references underlined in blue are linked to publications on ResearchGate,

letting you access and read them immediately.

SEE PROFILE

Available from: Amechi Akwanya

Retrieved on: 13 May 2016

IOSR Journal Of Humanities And Social Science (IOSR-JHSS)

Volume 18, Issue 6 (Nov. - Dec. 2013), PP 25-31

e-ISSN: 2279-0837, p-ISSN: 2279-0845.

www.iosrjournals.org

Dying and Restoration in Oscar Wild’s The Importance of Being

Earnest and Wole Soyinka’s The Lion And The Jewel

Amechi Nicholas Akwanya, Emeka Thomas Michael Chukwumezie

Department of English and Literary Studies University of Nigeria, Nsukka

Department of English and Literary Studies University of Nigeria, Nsukka

Abstract: Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest and Wole Soyinka’s The Lion and the Jewel are

plays often read for their social relevance, rarely picking up their classical resonance and discovering their

deeper levels of meaning. As a result, discussions tend to focus on what might be the point of the play. In this

paper in which we follow Northrop Frye in exploring comedy to its roots in myth and ritual, we shall examine

the deep mythic forms that underlie the two plays. This enables us to see them as sequences re-enacting the

spring archetype in which life and community are renewed and rejuvenated.

Keywords: archetype, comedy, enactment, fruitfulness, myth, mythical form, representation, ritual, sequence,

spring, vegetation cycle

I.

Introduction

Overwhelmingly critical discussions of The Importance of Being Earnest focus on the...