English Literature / Unit 15 ENL 1451 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
Reading an Epigram in Wilde
The idea
An epigram is a brief, memorable, often witty statement, and Wilde's are built to overturn expectations. Read one in four steps. First, find the expected statement the line imitates: "To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune" sounds like sympathy. Second, find the turn: "to lose both looks like carelessness" treats a tragedy as a lapse in manners. Third, ask what the reversal exposes: Lady Bracknell judges people by social propriety, not feeling. Fourth, ask who speaks it, because Wilde's epigrams characterize the speaker and satirize the society that shares her values. Then state the target of the wit: here, the snobbery that treats parentage as a social credential.
In practice
Expectation, turn, exposure, speaker.
Where people slip
Wilde's epigrams are satire, not nonsense. Ask what social value the reversal mocks.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
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