So, Oscar Wilde's most famous work finally makes the transition to the big screen. It surprises me a little that it has taken so long -and surprises me even more that The Picture of Dorian Gray still awaits its melodramatic perversion at the hands of the British film industry- but I must say that I'm almost looking forward to it. What with Dame Judi Dench further demonstrating her much understated range of dramatic expression by playing a slightly severe authority figure lacking in any intensity whatsoever, and Colin Firth reprising his much neglected role as Colin Firth, it promises to be a convention-defying feast- why, I hear they even had Hugh Grant lined up to play the bumbling fop, Algy. There's thinking outside the box for you.

One of the first texts new English Literature students at Glasgow University are introduced to is The Importance of Earnest- though, regrettably, it was not so when first I entered the department, The Merchant of Venice and The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four and Five being among the teeth-grindingly tedious titles of my formative years. For shame, for shame! The Importance of Being Earnest is a notoriously difficult work to extract anything solid from, being oftentimes written off as a shallow construction of frothy effervescence. Being a thoroughly lazy and often unmotivated individual, I am quite painfully aware that what little literary know-how I possess will quickly be eroded by the year of sloth I propose to undergo before my return to University next year- and I therefore hope to stave off the baying wolves of entropy through the introduction of what may or may not become a regular section of this diary, depending on public demand and personal caprice. Without further ado, let me now embark upon Part the First- "Some Preliminary Thoughts On........ The Importance of Being Earnest"

As The Picture of Dorian Gray is a realisation of Wilde's earlier lectures and essays on aestheticism so, I think, we may trace back The Importance of Being Earnest to an earlier essay, The Soul of Man under Socialism. A piece more notable for its sincerity and genuine enthusiasm than for any political insight or lasting contribution to socialist debate, Wilde notes in The Soul of Man under Socialism that farce -at least in Victorian England- had a great deal of potential for concealing revolutionary art from the censor. Delightful work may be produced under the genre-umbrellas of the burlesque and the farcical, and in work of such a kind the Victorian artist was allowed a great deal of freedom. The Importance of Being Earnest, needless to say, is just such a farce- it challenges society's values, refutes and reverses its conclusions, abstains from its responsibilities, and introduces the now familiar comic note of anarchy.

Generally speaking, conventional farce allows its anarchic spirit to be constantly opposed and finally defeated by the prevailing norms of civilised society. The Importance of Being Earnest, however, evidences no such conflict between the forces of chaos and order. The stage is not an ordinary, civilised world temporarily disrupted, but a state of constant and perfect classroom anarchy, the benevolent absence of rules, morals and principles. Authority in such a world is a straightforward absurdity, and all attempts to assert it -primarily by Lady Bracknell, of course- are doomed to failure. Every character is individually free to fully realise himself or herself in an idyllic Utopia of wish-fulfilment. Cecily imagines herself engaged to an Earnest and lo! It is so. Jack announces that his name is Earnest and, magically, it emerges that it is. Algy declares himself to be Jack's brother, and so he turns out to be. All three become their own imaginary doubles, permanently granted the freedom which their fictional counterparts allowed them- laws are rendered powerless, and double lives no longer need be kept a secret. Even language itself is held under their sway- characters impose their own meaning upon words, never allowing mere language to explode their fantasy world, but only to recreate it anew.

Of course, the movie may well turn out to be a errant piece of effervescent froth- but, with Colin Firth in it, at least it's sure to be particularly effervescent.