Oscar Wilde: The Perversity of Paradox and the Sense of Sense Itself

Oscar Wilde specializes in focusing explicitly on the paradoxical and nonsensical character of the clash of sense in humor’s working. The chapter argues that, in doing so, Wilde’s humor brings out the truth or nature of sense or meaning itself. Because of this emphasis on a specific kind of sense, the focus of his humor on truth, like Dickens’, is relatively narrow, but the kind of truth it brings out is, again, especially deep. Wilde gives his own account of his humorous stance and procedure in his critical writings, and the chapter draws on this account in making its argument.