SOURCE: Baselga, Mariano. “Oscar Wilde and the Semantic Mechanisms of Humour: The Satire of Social Habits.” In Rediscovering Oscar Wilde, edited by C. George Sandulescu, pp. 13-20. Gerrards Cross, England: Colin Smythe, 1994.

In the following essay, Baselga analyzes the humor in “The Canterville Ghost” and Wilde's play The Importance of Being Earnest.

When we talk about humour in literature, the name of Oscar Wilde often comes up. And this is true not only for any reader or spectator of his brilliant comedies but also for scholars and specialists in humour by itself, that is, those who try to explain what provokes laughing or smiling. A peculiar writer indeed, attracting the attention of both linguists and literary critics.

Actually, if a linguistic approach has been chosen, one is consequently supposed to be as ‘neutral’ as possible in the study of non-linguistic aspects of the texts. That is what we...