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La importancia de llamarse Ernesto

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256 pages, Paperback

Published February 6, 2025

4 people want to read

About the author

Oscar Wilde

5,531 books39k followers
Oscar Fingal O'Fflahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish poet and playwright. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular playwrights in London in the early 1890s. He is best remembered for his epigrams and plays, his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, and his criminal conviction for gross indecency for homosexual acts.
Wilde's parents were Anglo-Irish intellectuals in Dublin. In his youth, Wilde learned to speak fluent French and German. At university, he read Greats; he demonstrated himself to be an exceptional classicist, first at Trinity College Dublin, then at Magdalen College, Oxford. He became associated with the emerging philosophy of aestheticism, led by two of his tutors, Walter Pater and John Ruskin. After university, Wilde moved to London into fashionable cultural and social circles.
Wilde tried his hand at various literary activities: he wrote a play, published a book of poems, lectured in the United States and Canada on "The English Renaissance" in art and interior decoration, and then returned to London where he lectured on his American travels and wrote reviews for various periodicals. Known for his biting wit, flamboyant dress and glittering conversational skill, Wilde became one of the best-known personalities of his day. At the turn of the 1890s, he refined his ideas about the supremacy of art in a series of dialogues and essays, and incorporated themes of decadence, duplicity, and beauty into what would be his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890). Wilde returned to drama, writing Salome (1891) in French while in Paris, but it was refused a licence for England due to an absolute prohibition on the portrayal of Biblical subjects on the English stage. Undiscouraged, Wilde produced four society comedies in the early 1890s, which made him one of the most successful playwrights of late-Victorian London.
At the height of his fame and success, while An Ideal Husband (1895) and The Importance of Being Earnest (1895) were still being performed in London, Wilde issued a civil writ against John Sholto Douglas, the 9th Marquess of Queensberry for criminal libel. The Marquess was the father of Wilde's lover, Lord Alfred Douglas. The libel hearings unearthed evidence that caused Wilde to drop his charges and led to his own arrest and criminal prosecution for gross indecency with other males. The jury was unable to reach a verdict and so a retrial was ordered. In the second trial Wilde was convicted and sentenced to two years' hard labour, the maximum penalty, and was jailed from 1895 to 1897. During his last year in prison he wrote De Profundis (published posthumously in abridged form in 1905), a long letter that discusses his spiritual journey through his trials and is a dark counterpoint to his earlier philosophy of pleasure. On the day of his release, he caught the overnight steamer to France, never to return to Britain or Ireland. In France and Italy, he wrote his last work, The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898), a long poem commemorating the harsh rhythms of prison life.

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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
14 reviews
September 30, 2025
Una comedia breve, ingeniosa, divertida, ligera y fácil de leer, llena de diálogos ingeniosos con juego de palabras, malentendidos hilarantes y giros inesperados. Con ritmo ágil y con una estructura que nos mantiene constantemente entretenidos. Aunque ya la había leído con anterioridad, esta edición en especial me ha gustado bastante debido a que trae pies de nota que, sin exagerar en su contenido, ayudan a entender más el contexto de la historia.

"La importancia de llamarse Ernesto", a pesar de su ligereza, es una obra muy recomendable, tanto por su valor literario como por su capacidad de entretener con inteligencia. Sus puntos fuertes en el ingenio y el diálogo superan con creces sus debilidades. Además, es una puerta de entrada perfecta al mundo de Oscar Wilde, uno de los grandes autores de la literatura inglesa.
Profile Image for Eneri Delgado.
13 reviews
January 10, 2026
Me gustó la obra. Solo que "El retrato de Dorian Gray" sí me dejó la bara muy alta con Oscar Wilde, eso hizo que estuviera constantemente comparándola con ella, algunos personajes me recordaban a ese libro. Fuera de eso, me gustaría verla en teatro, para lo que fue escrita, tal vez algún día pueda hacerlo, pero por ahora me conformo con leer el manuscrito. Es fácil de leer y me mantuvo entretenida. Le pondría 3 estrellas y media, pero lamentablemente no se puede, así que con 4 está bien.
P.D. Odié a Miss Prism, vieja insoportable.
Profile Image for David Camacho.
74 reviews
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March 17, 2025
Gente superficial, enamorada y que no es seria. Una obra corta, sencilla y carismática con un giro al final bastante curioso, una comedia que no creo que haya envejecido. Es tan entretenida que pienso que es una lectura que todos deberíamos de leer (o ver) en algún momento de nuestras vidas, más si eres un principiante. Sí, es una buena lectura de introducción para alguien.
Profile Image for aitana f.
15 reviews
October 2, 2025
Oscar Wilde nos regala una comedia de enredos simplemente brillante. Dos amigos se inventan una identidad falsa para impresionar a sus amadas, pero la mentira se les va de las manos de la forma más divertida posible.

Los diálogos son puro veneno elegante, con ese humor ácido e inteligente que te hace reír a carcajadas mientras subrayas frases. Es increíble cómo Wilde logra criticar la hipocresía social disfrazándola de comedia ligera.

Las situaciones son cada vez más absurdas, los personajes más entrañables y el final simplemente perfecto.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews

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