Oscar Wilde as dandy has become by now a familiar theme, both in biographies and in criticism of his plays. “The Divided Self in the Society Comedies of Oscar Wilde,”[1] by Arthur Ganz, is the first of two essays by Ganz and several pieces by other contemporary critics on this important subject. In fact, Ganz is writing centrally about The Importance of Being Earnest as well as about the three society comedies. The great difference between the society comedies and The Importance, in Ganz’s view, is that the society comedies contain two worlds, set off in contradistinction to one another—the Philistine and the dandiacal—whereas The Importance is set fully and solely in the latter. In order to achieve the unity of this play, Ganz argues, Wilde had to suppress “half his nature.” That other half may be discovered in the Philistine world of the society comedies.
That world is one of sentimental plots, in which ladies with mysterious pasts make commanding speeches and where “fates of empires hang on intercepted letters and stolen bracelets.” In opposition to that world the members of the dandiacal world are witty, elegant persons tossing off Wildean epigrams but taking scant interest in the action going on about them. Each of the three plays contains a crucial character, the woman with a past. And in each, Wilde arranges for the redemption of that woman. Ganz sees reflected in her Wilde’s own homosexuality; she shares with him the secret situation “forced upon Wilde” and so benefits from “the plea for acceptance and forgiveness” that ultimately emerges through the character who has most to learn. Ganz cites the contemporary French critic Robert Merle’s study of Wilde, who suggests this point, but who also makes the strongest case for Mrs Arbuthnot, the mother in A Woman of No Importance, because “her sin, like his, is sexual.”[2] Ganz goes on to show how the three crucial characters in each of the three plays are dramaturgically parallel, though An Ideal Husband introduces a variation, in which Mrs Chevely is made the villainess, Sir Robert Chiltern is the sinner who must be pardoned, and the Puritan who must undergo conversion is his wife. As for Lord Goring, he is at the last the messenger of love and forgiveness.
At this point Ganz reminds us that his subject is the Wildean divided self, and that the Philistine and dandiacal worlds in conflict in the three society plays are a reflection and indeed are “deeply expressive of the isolation of an artist and an individual man.” Providing a coherent summary of the evolution of the dandy and the theory of dandyism as a philosophy of life, Ganz explains how sympathetic dandyism was for Wilde and how it underlay his individualism and its first condition of absolute freedom. He reviews this value as it emerges in the three comedies, including in the character of Mrs Allonby, who like the dandy seeks out of life “a series of exquisite sensations to enjoy.” Ganz proceeds with a convincing exposition of how the dandy makes his (or her) way through the treachery and tedium of the Philistine world, representing “the dominance of aesthetic form,” but he emerges there also in the person of the Wildean Philistine, the exiled artist who has sinned and seeks forgiveness for rejecting the mores of society. Still uncorrupted at heart, he may beg society “for pardon and acceptance”; and yet, speaking contradictorily as his dandiacal self, he can still disdain that society, demanding absolute freedom for self-expression.  Ganz believes that Wilde never thought through, never realized how persistent and significant this pattern had proved to be in his plays. Perhaps he never realized as well that only in The Importance of Being Earnest did he overcome the pattern and produce “a work of pure dandysm.”[3]
Ganz’s interest in Wilde’s dandyism continues in a sequel, “The Meaning of The Importance of Being Earnest.”[4] In pursuit of dandyism as a philosophy of life, Ganz traces its development from the Romantic age—Brummel, Byron, d’Orsay, Disraeli, and the two writers whom Wilde had read carefully for this idea, Barbey d’Aurevilly and Baudelaire. Wilde was certainly aware of the historical aura attendant on dandyism, framed most explicitly by Baudelaire in Le peintre de la vie moderne, as the exercise of heroism in an age past its prime. Dandyism, as both Baudelaire and Wilde understood it, was no mere affectation of elegant dress; these things were mere symbols for the cultivation of originality, of individualism. Dandyism is the expression of an attitude hostile toward the society one lives in, an “effete and unworthy age.” Baudelaire even went so far as to consider dandyism “a sort of religion.”[5]
Without directly referencing it Ganz looks back to his earlier article in College English, where he describes the conflict of two separate worlds, Philistine and dandiacal, in the social comedies—Philistine being a world, though often spoken of, entirely absent from The Importance of Being Earnest. Satire is broadly present in this play, but Wilde makes an important distinction between satire and dandyism. To take one example, “Where the satirist makes fun of the abuses of marriage, the Dandy criticizes the institution itself.” Second-rate champagne in married households is a sign of the demoralizing condition of marriage. Lady Bracknell, arch-Philistine that she is, nonetheless imitates Algernon’s dandiacal point of view on more than one occasion. She visits the newly widowed Lady Harbury and finds her greatly changed: “she looks quite twenty years younger.” Doctor Chasuble takes the same point of view, including himself in the list of a human kind full of faults: he admits he is “very susceptible to draughts.” These characters, and most of the others, as Ganz proceeds to show us through pointed quotation from the play, are “dandies by indirection.” Ordinary morality whenever it appears “is made to seem ridiculous.”
An additional way in which the play invites analysis for its dandiacal qualities is the manner in which it prizes sensation, the more unusual and original the better, for its own sake. When Algernon, masquerading as Jack’s younger brother Ernest, is about to appear to Cecily, she expresses her fear that this reputedly wicked person will look just like anyone else. When Algernon enters, “very gay and debonair,” she disappointedly exclaims “He does!” Still more important than sensation to the dandy, an idea evidently derived from Pater and his famous conclusion to The Renaissance, is “the superiority of aesthetic form.” One finds this, in perhaps the single best example of the notion, in Gwendolen’s statement, “In matters of grave importance, style not sincerity is the vital thing.” It is an attitude deeply and influentially present throughout the play. (A memorable example from another play, An Ideal Husband, is the butler Phipps, who, Wilde explains in a stage direction, “represents the dominance of form”).[6]
And so it is this “absolute faith in pure aesthetic form . . . that makes the Wildean dandy unique,” Ganz explains, and so makes the play itself unique:
It stands alone among English comedies, not only because of the quality of its wit, but because it is an expression of Wilde’s theories and attitudes, and no other writer has approached the theater with a comparable point of view. It stands alone among Wilde’s plays because the dandiacal element in The Importance, unlike that in the society comedies, is not in open conflict with a Philistine element and limited to its own sections of the play, but appears everywhere and makes of the entire work a kind of dandiacal utopia, a world of perfect form.
Ganz feels concerned that he will seem to have been arguing for Wilde’s play as a piece of disguised art criticism. And yet it remains true, he asserts, that art was at the center of Wilde’s life, and almost everything he wrote was in a sense “disguised art criticism.” A reader might add that he maintained this dandiacal attitude even in—perhaps especially in—his trials, where he maintained that books are not moral or immoral; they are either well-written or badly written. That is all.[7]This, says Ganz, made him “the supreme example of the critic as artist.”[8]
Several other articles emerge in the 1960s making complementary claims to interest. E. B. Partridge, in “The Importance of Not Being Earnest,”[9] attempts to define the function of wit in the play, to show how it combines a “unique fusion of wit, nonsense, parody, and burlesque.”[10] Three years later, Harold E. Toliver, reviewing Ganz’s and other recently published articles, argued for a superior understanding of Wilde’s play, in “Wilde and the Importance of ‘Sincere and studied triviality’.”[11] Toliver’s title and his subject itself derive from a remark Wilde made to a journalist, explaining that his play “is exquisitely trivial, a delicate bubble of fancy,” but that it has its philosophy: “that we should treat all the trivial things of life seriously, and all the serious things of life with sincere and studied triviality.”[12] Tolliver’s article follows a delightful arc of analysis showing that Wilde’s philosophy is simultaneously, and paradoxically, trivial and serious. Again and again, in a series of easily accessible examples, he shows the truth of Wilde’s statement, even while persuading the reader that true earnestness, as the title will have it, may be achieved only with a proper perception on the part of the audience that this “delicate bubble of fancy,” by its very nature a burlesque of all that is serious, shows us how to take seriously that it is style (as Gwendolen insists), not seriousness, that is the vital thing. Toliver’s article could not survive the seriousness of its subject were it not for the playful tone that characterizes it throughout. Not all articles whose intention is to explain the wit, the humor, the comedy of Wilde’s play have been astute enough, as has Toliver’s, to escape an unfortunate overbalance of sincerity.
In the same year of 1963 the British Council published a revised edition of James Laver’s notable overview, Oscar Wilde, as much as anything else a reconsideration of Wilde’s swiftly recovering reputation.[13]An elegant and wide-ranging but flawed survey of Wilde’s life and writings, Laver’s account devotes major attention to The Picture of Dorian Gray and what he characterizes as a kind of aftermath, in Wilde’s fateful meeting with Lord Alfred Douglas and all that followed. Confronting what he views as a central issue raised by this book, which bears an “unimpeachable” moral but whose tone, indeed whose “whole mental climate,” is “quite otherwise,” Laver uses Dorian Gray to identify the theme of homosexuality in Wilde’s life, and concludes that he was bisexual, of which his marriage and the birth of two sons provides, in Laver’s view, “sufficient proof.”[14] Laver proceeds to link together the burgeoning success of Wilde’s career beginning in 1891 and Wilde’s meeting with Douglas. It was Douglas, in Laver’s view, against whom the most serious charge was not that he moved the elder man to waste his money but that he wasted his time. Yet it may have been Douglas also who “forced Wilde to try his hand at that literary form which was . . . the only way in which a writer can make money quickly; the theatre.” Laver makes it sound as if Douglas was the prime motive force for Wilde’s astonishing success on the West End stage. When Laver comes to the series of trials that eventually brought about Wilde’s downfall, he explains that times have changed since then; most people now “are familiar with the idea of sexual inversion” and understand that it is “rather the concern of the psychiatrists than of the lawyers.”[15]
Laver’s views of the subject of homosexuality, now a half-century old and evidently dated, are perhaps best taken as an early recognition of a subject urgently in need of a clearer, more enlightened approach. A further question arises about his views of the plays themselves. Laver sees the first three major plays as “artificial” (there is no mention of Salomé), but The Importance of Being Earnest “soared beyond artificiality into the realms of fantasy.” Paradoxically, the play is more “naturalistic” than its predecessors: there are “no set speeches, no asides,[16] no ‘strong’ scenes, no ‘curtains’” It would seem that Laver underestimates how close Wilde’s last play comes to features of nineteenth-century farce and melodrama that it so expertly parodies, or mocks through calculated omission. All the same, Laver offers interesting insight into the relationship between character and wit in Wilde’s play. As in the case of Lady Bracknell—”a real creation,” a “late Victorian grande dame”—the wit “is not merely attached to the characters; it flows out of the situations,” bespeaking a unified effect on a delighted audience by a work “still as fresh and amusing now as when it was first written.”[17]
In the same year, W. H. Auden brought out a long, thoughtful review and summary of Wilde’s life, on the occasion of the publication of a superb edition of his letters by the English publisher and scholar Rupert Hart-Davis.[18] With space for only a single paragraph on The Importance of Being Earnest, Auden brought real understanding to Wilde’s play:
Wilde succeeded—almost, it would seem, by accident, for he never realized its infinite superiority to all his other plays—in writing what is perhaps the only pure verbal opera in English. The solution that, deliberately or accidentally, he found was to subordinate every other dramatic element to dialogue for its own sake and create a verbal universe in which the characters are determined by the kinds of things they say, and the plot is nothing but a succession of opportunities to say them. Like all works of art, it drew its sustenance from life, and, speaking for myself, whenever I see or read the play I always wish I did not know what I do about Wilde’s life at the time he was writing it—that when, for instance, John Worthing talks of going Bunburying, I did not immediately visualize Alfred Taylor’s establishment. On rereading it after his release, Wilde said, “it was extraordinary reading the play over. How I used to toy with that Tiger Life.” At its conclusion, I find myself imagining a sort of nightmare Pantomime Transformation Scene in which, at the touch of the magician’s wand, instead of the workaday world’s turning into fairyland, the country house in a never-never Hertfordshire turns into the Old Bailey, the features of Lady Bracknell into those of Mr Justice Wills. Still, it is a masterpiece, and on account of it Wilde will always enjoy the impersonal fame of an artist as well as the notoriety of his personal legend.[19]
There are few such perspectives on Wilde and his writings that give pride of place to neither the artist nor the play, but instead manage to encapsulate the permanently fraught relationship between the two.
By the 1960s publication in paperback was becoming an ever-increasing and relatively inexpensive way of presenting classics to the public. Wilde’s play was no exception. An “authoritative text version” with appropriate ancillary material was brought out in 1965 by Avon Books, edited by the New York drama critic Henry Popkin.[20] Like many other texts published for popular consumption, Popkin’s was not based on the first edition of 1899 but rather on the Methuen edition of 1908, edited by Robert Ross, and its many presumable successors, all of which may be easily distinguished by a prominent textual variant concerning the crucial fact about Jack’s parentage.[21]
Popkin’s Introduction, briefly yet broadly characterizing Wilde’s play in several significant contexts, historical and otherwise, also calls attention to advances in the last decade in our knowledge of textual matters: the discovery by Wilde’s younger son Vyvyan Holland of a German translation of the play, Ernst Sein! (1957) and the publication by the New York Public Library the year before of facsimile texts of early holograph and typescript versions of an existing four-act predecessor of the three-act play everyone knows.[22] Popkin’s publisher evidently allowed him to expand the compass of his edition, surrounding the text of the play with transcribed excerpts from the Public Library facsimile versions and relevant excerpts from the letters, and augmented by commentaries by Shaw, Beerbohm, Hankin, and Agate, excerpted from their reviews of the first production (Shaw), the 1902 revival (Beerbohm), the first collected edition of 1908 (Hankin), and (although tonally much different) Agate’s 1947 denigration of the man and the writer.[23] For all of the book’s diminutive size and modest appearance, Popkin’s notion of the proper way to offer the text of a classic farcical comedy to a modern audience and readership while simultaneously providing additional material to help understand and appreciate it set a new, enlightened standard for how to approach the needs and interests of what might be seen generally as a mass market readership—or perhaps a subset of school and college students who might be more attracted than put off by being told that what they were about to read was the “authoritative text version” of a famous work by a controversial author. Evidently, even by the mid-1960s, the range of attraction of such an author as Oscar Wilde—perhaps more so than almost any other author—was great, and striking.[24]
At the same time, Wilde’s play was attracting thoughtful essayists who could offer sophisticated insights into the form, meaning, and aesthetic bearings of a farce that had evidently reached a very wide theatrical audience and readership. In 1966 the Sewanee Review, a highly regarded literary journal, published “Comedy and Oscar Wilde,” by Ian Gregor, one of the most valuable and interesting pieces to date.[25] Unusually well written, and with a title that perhaps deliberately overgeneralizes its coverage, Gregor’s essay proves to be a deep, cogent piece about Wilde as a dandiacal playwright who includes a series of dandies as characters in his four major comedies and mounts a series of attempts to use their dramatic presence “to resolve a particular clash between manners and morals, between style and content, between the author and his characters.”[26] The central problem Wilde was addressing, Gregor argues, was the specific one of “finding a world fit for the dandy to live in.”
The role of the dandy in Wilde’s four comedies—Lord Darlington in Lady Windermere’s Fan (1892), Lord Illingworth in A Woman of No Importance (1893), Lord Goring in An Ideal Husband (1895), and John Worthing in The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)—is “largely defined by his alienation,” Gregor explains. He refers not only to the dandy’s social alienation but to a fundamental kind of dramatic alienation, realized to the extent that he is shown to be “self-consciously static” and so to exist largely outside the action of the play. Of course, he cannot exist completely outside it, and so his position is compromised, to the extent that he becomes involved in the plot and proves to be an agent either for good (Darlington, Goring) or ill (Illingworth). It is fascinating to follow Gregor’s skillful close reading of each play in turn, exposing the details of the compromise. Illingworth’s is probably the greatest, insofar as Wilde uses him ever more as an agent of the machinations of the plot, deserting him as a meaningful dandy and thinking of him “in the wicked role in which he has cast him.” Indeed, the more Illingworth becomes enmeshed in the plot, “the less Wilde cares about what he says.” And so, as he departs, in the last act, leaving Mrs Arbuthnot behind, he descends into “all the clichés of phrase and attitude of the stock-in-trade villain,” capped by Wilde’s even greater retreat into the melodramatic scene, in which Mrs Arbuthnot strikes Illingworth across the face with his glove. We may see from this how divisive it is for Wilde to bring his play to an ending in which he reveals how little his attention is engaged with the moral questions that the plot seems genuinely to raise. In this play the dandy, from the beginning a faithless lover, has been “degraded into a melodramatic villain.”[27]
Wilde achieves greater success maintaining his dandy as a semi-reclusive, static individual in his next comedy, An Ideal Husband. Lord Goring is, Gregor argues, a much more satisfactory portrait of a dandy, unconfused by the plot. And yet the plot itself presents significant limitations, in this play of political intrigue in which Goring turns out to effect two decisive actions. His first action is to expose the treacherous Mrs Cheveley’s plans for blackmail—an action having nothing to do with Wilde’s characterization of him as “the first well-dressed philosopher in the history of thought.” His second accomplishment is to persuade Lady Chiltern to allow her husband to remain in public life and to accept the cabinet post that he surely deserves. And so Wilde has finally found in Goring a dramatic voice for himself—but has not succeeded in constructing a world where that voice can have a truly “appropriate dramatic effect.”[28]
One sees at this point where Gregor’s argument is aimed, and one appreciates the ingenious strategy in which he shows that Wilde has now reached the point at which he is able to realize that the dandy’s mastery of the world can occur only in “a world of his own making”:
Only in a world of dandies will his voice and actions become harmonious: a world where the categories of serious and frivolous will no longer apply, where every character can speak like the author and the author like every character, where everything that can be seen is harmonious and there is nothing that cannot be seen. The dandy can exist fully only in a world of idyll, of pure play.
Gregor now proceeds to a long final section in which he comments closely on the way Wilde makes a very pleasing, satisfying, and “completely realized” idyll in the form of his last play.[29] There is no useful summary that might take the place of reading Gregor’s happy account of Wilde’s brilliant dramaturgy here. Gregor’s essay, unlike many written as independent attempts to capture the real essence of Wilde’s play, has sustained itself over time and remains one of the most perennially useful and satisfying approaches, accessible to undergraduate students as well as to the most sophisticated and experienced of readers.
Two years after Popkin was attracting a growing audience with an expanded presentation of Wilde’s classic play, an ambitious, well-timed study of virtually Wilde’s entire oeuvre appeared. Entitled The Art of Oscar Wilde, by Epifanio San Juan, Jr, it attempted to take the measure of important cultural and literary change while drawing close attention to the character of Wilde’s writing. San Juan is aware that at the present time “antithetical features” exist side by side in it, creating “a massive and complex structure of dispositions, attitudes, and values which defy any simple categorical accounting.”[30] In the context of a concise yet wide-ranging introductory survey of earlier and recent writing about the late Victorians, a needed revaluation of Wilde’s works appears to San Juan to indicate that “continuing vitality and cogency” lie nowhere else except in the “moral discriminations” Wilde imposed on his subjects. This is so regardless of genre, San Juan contends. If it seems a considerable stretch to include in this revaluation a trivial farcical comedy such as The Importance of Being Earnest, to San Juan’s eye Wilde remains permanently preoccupied “with the human condition” as it coalesces around two themes: sin, and an experience of “doubt and dread arising from the clash between pagan appetite and Christian morality.”[31] What is presently called for, then, above all, is “critical scrutiny of the individual works and an appreciation of the vision of truth embodied in forms which are significant and enduring.”[32]
Taken in its turn is the last of the “comedies,” The Importance of Being Earnest, subjected by San Juan to an enlightened close reading which moves topically from idea to idea. Despite the unavoidable fact that the “unequalled farcical construction” of the play relies on premises that “beg for no serious consideration,” exhibiting a quasi-comic bravery San Juan proceeds in analyzing a plot made up of formulaic stock situations that work out the consequences of the sheer absurdity of a pair of female characters obsessed with marrying someone of the name of Ernest. The double meaning of the name and its homonym is developed incessantly, through to the end of the play and Jack’s concluding punning summary: “On the contrary, Aunt Augusta, I’ve now realized for the first time in my life the vital Importance of Being Earnest.” One detects a purposeful echo here from San Juan’s Introduction and its concern with “antithetical features” in Wilde’s works, which turns up almost everywhere in the play, as in the “twin brothers” motif, but overwhelmingly in verbal ironies, such as Miss Prism’s “The manuscript unfortunately was abandoned. I use the word in the sense of lost or mislaid.” The plot sequence is simple, San Juan asserts, for all the “constant digressions” and “fluent irrelevance of the dialogue,” whose “agility of pace” hides the playwright’s “skill of composition.” In fact, the alleged simplicity of the action (San Juan’s chapter is entitled “The Action of the Comedies”) undervalues his own emphasis on how the play, with almost mathematical precision, works out its tale of blithe mistaking, beginning with the governess’s fatal error, twenty-eight years before, in placing the manuscript of her three-volume novel in the bassinet and the baby in the handbag. Then, finally, when she is abjectly cornered by Lady Bracknell into confessing the truth of her unaccountable error, she somehow continues true to form, evincing no concern whatever for the mislaid baby but finding genuine delight in the restoration of the handbag.
Wilde’s double consciousness, his “bifocal vision,” captured again and again in his paradoxical epigrams, pervades the play, San Juan argues, achieving its function as “complex parody.” In this way, as exemplified centrally in Miss Prism’s language and behavior, the play attains a vital comic outlook on life and the world. San Juan sustains what amounts to a bravura piece through almost endless, precise quotation in support of a series of bright insights that carry the reader delightedly along. At a few junctures the author becomes overly rational in showing how the composition goes so perfectly together. In one example, when Miss Prism substitutes the baby for the manuscript in the handbag San Juan explains that “she commits an act that is the result of a disregard for the immediate and present actuality.”[33] This seems too cold and calculating a way to describe the governess’s inexplicable failure to mind her business, nor does it acknowledge the patent absurdity that clings to all such fundamental farcical precedents. And yet Prism recognizes herself fully once again when, twenty-eight years later, she is asked to identify the bag. Those are her initials on the lock, she discovers: finally, a sure indication of her possession. She had placed them there “in an extravagant mood” (What? Miss Prism prey to an extravagant mood?)—an indelible mark of genuine human character that somehow rescues her and indemnifies her from the guilt and shame of her precipitating action.
In the end San Juan vindicates his ambitious goal to scrutinize Wilde’s writings at sustained close range while simultaneously setting them in a large historical continuum that extends for three-quarters of a century and more from the close of the Victorian era to San Juan’s own, greatly changed post-war time. That he seems to bring to the task the techniques of close reading common to the New Criticism of the period, now well entrenched, is more apparent than real, for he has articulated a well-developed, complex technique of his own, grounded in an incisive historical awareness that serves to place Oscar Wilde and his oeuvre at the forefront of contemporary views of literary worth. Compare San Juan’s book of 1967 with Edouard Roditi’s formally similar work of 1947 and one may realize the presence of an important example of flourishing Wildean criticism in the later twentieth century.
- Modern Drama, 3 (Spring 1960), 16–23. ↵
- Merle, Oscar Wilde, 355. ↵
- Ganz, "The Divided Self," 23. ↵
- Arthur Ganz, "The Meaning of The Importance of Being Earnest," Modern Drama, 6 (Spring 1963), 42–52. ↵
- N.s., quoted by Ganz, 44. ↵
- Wilde, An Ideal Husband, By the Author of Lady Windermere’s Fan, 121. ↵
- Wilde wrote in the Introduction to The Picture of Dorian Gray and reiterated in the first trial his view that there is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. As the defense attorney Edward Carson put it, in a question to Wilde, "Books are all well written or badly written"?
WILDE I think "either well written—" CARSON "Books are all well written." WILDE "Or badly written." CARSON "That is all." WILDE Yes. CARSON That expresses your view? WILDE My view of art, yes. (Holland, Irish Peacock & Scarlet Marquess, 80). ↵
- Ganz, "The Meaning of The Importance of Being Earnest," 52. ↵
- Bucknell Review, 9 (1960), 143–58. ↵
- Partridge, "Importance of Not Being Earnest," 156. ↵
- Modern Drama, 6 (1963), 389–99. ↵
- N.s., cited in Toliver, 389. ↵
- James Laver, Oscar Wilde, rev. ed. (London: Longman’s, Green, 1963). ↵
- Laver, Oscar Wilde, 17. ↵
- Laver, Oscar Wilde, 23. ↵
- There is in fact one aside, Jack’s comment on Lady Lancing: "And after six months nobody knew her" (The Importance of Being Earnest) ↵
- Oscar Wilde, 23. Laver, Keeper of Prints and Drawings at the Victoria and Albert Museum and the author of many books on art and other subjects, took a scholarly approach to the presentation of this brief, thirty-page monograph by including an extensive, six-page bibliography of primary and secondary materials which may be seen to comment substantially on Wilde’s much-recovered reputation, as does the addition of Laver’s piece itself to the long catalog of "Writers and Their Work" published by the British Council. ↵
- Letters of Oscar Wilde ↵
- W. H. Auden, "An Improbable Life," New Yorker, 39 (9 March 1963), reprinted in Oscar Wilde: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Ellmann, 135–6. ↵
- Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest, ed. Popkin. ↵
- In correcting the Winifred Dolan typescript in 1898 for the Smithers first edition of 1899, for some obscure reason Wilde shortened Lady Bracknell’s reply to Jack’s "I have lost both my parents!" in the following way. The line originally read "Both? To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune . . . to lose both seems like carelessness." Wilde reduced it to "Both? That seems like carelessness," a redaction on the author’s part that consequently appears as the reading in the 1899 first edition. In preparing the text of the play for the Methuen Collected Edition of 1908, Ross restored the lengthier version of the speech. In his New Mermaids edition of 1980 Russell Jackson also makes this restoration, explaining that the longer reading is one that "has become current and which actresses and readers may prefer." He continues, "The present edition defies the author’s final decision, reverting to the line as it appears in text before W[inifred] D[olan]: the authority for the precise form of Ross’s reading is not apparent" (The Importance of Being Earnest, ed. Jackson (1980), 30n.). ↵
- For an extended discussion of the New York Public Library facsimile edition and Vyvyan Holland’s edition of the four-act play, see The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde, Volume IX, Plays 2, ed. Donohue, 49-54. ↵
- See the various discussions above. It is unclear why Popkin would choose to print Agate’s unrelenting negative assessment in a collection of readings presumably intended to provide critical insight into Wilde’s play. ↵
- It seemed appropriate that about this same time a scholarly journal would publish a summary overview of the history of the first production of the play; see Paul C. Wadleigh, "Earnest at St James’s Theatre," Quarterly Journal of Speech 52 (1966), 58–62. ↵
- Sewanee Review, 74, no. 2 (Spring, 1966), 501–21. ↵
- Gregor, "Comedy and Wilde," 501. ↵
- Gregor, "Comedy and Wilde," 502–9. ↵
- Gregor, "Comedy and Wilde," 509–11. ↵
- Gregor, "Comedy and Wilde," 512–21. ↵
- San Juan, Jr, The Art of Oscar Wilde, Introduction, 15. ↵
- Art of Oscar Wilde, Introduction, 9. ↵
- Art of Oscar Wilde, Introduction, 17. ↵
- San Juan, Art of Oscar Wilde, 195. ↵


21 Azimuth
Elizabeth Johnson
Learning Objectives
Students will be able to:
- Identify the azimuth of a linear feature (like a plate motion vector).
- Determine the cardinal direction (E, NE, SE, etc.) of plate motion from the azimuth.
What is Azimuth?
Azimuth is an angular measurement which uniquely determines the orientation of a feature on the surface of Earth.
Many geologic and geographic features are oriented in specific directions. It is very useful to be able to exactly measure orientation so we can analyze relationships between different geologic features. For example, geologists can measure the orientation of a contact or boundary between two different rock units. We can also record direction of motion, like the direction a stream is flowing, or the direction a landslide traveled from its source, or the motion of tectonic plates (this lab).
Figure 8 shows the cardinal directions: N, S, E, and W, along with more specific compass directions like NW. These subdivided compass directions are useful for qualitative descriptions of a general orientation, but for most geological applications we need to pinpoint direction more accurately. Azimuth divides the space around a point (the crosshair in the center of Figure 8) into 360 degrees. North is defined as 0 degrees, and is also 360 degrees (the complete circle). East is 90 degrees, South is 180 degrees, and West is 270 degrees. A perfect northeast orientation is at 45 degrees, half of the angular distance between North (0 degrees) and East (90 degrees).
Reference
Figure 8 modified from: https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19070259 By Autiwa – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link


84 Putting It Together
Summary
Article I of the Constitution establishes Congress as the legislative branch of government with broad powers to provide for the “common defense and general welfare of the United States,” along with specific powers in important areas of domestic and foreign affairs.
The framers provided for a bicameral legislative branch with equal representation in the Senate and proportional representation based on state population in the House. The two bodies differ in a number of important ways that influence the way that they operate. The House is a more formal institution, where hierarchy and seniority are important factors. The Senate, as a smaller, more intimate body, is less bound by formal rules than the House. Senators typically garner more media attention than House members because they serve statewide constituencies and serve longer terms of office.
Political parties are central to the organizational structure of Congress. Parties provide a measure of discipline that helps the House and Senate to function more efficiently. Members who switch parties often lose the benefits of seniority, such as committee chair positions, and face an uncertain future when they seek reelection.
An extensive leadership structure provides an organizational framework that helps House members work effectively if not efficiently. At the top of the leadership hierarchy is the Speaker of the House, who is the body’s presiding officer. Majority and minority leaders help set their party’s agenda on issues. The whips encourage party unity on House votes.
The Senate leadership consists of the presiding officer, majority leader, minority leader, and whips. Unlike in the House, where the Speaker wields considerable power, the presiding officer is not the most visible member of the Senate and can only vote in case of a tie. The majority and minority leaders work together to schedule and manage Senate business. Whips are less important in the Senate than in the House because the closer personal relationships that develop in the smaller body make it easier to know how members will vote without a formal whip count.
Much of the important work in Congress is accomplished through committees. The fate of legislation—which bills will make it to the floor of the House and Senate—is determined in committees. Members seek committee assignments based on their desire to influence policy, exert influence, and get reelected. Most committee work receives little, if any, media coverage. Investigative committees are the exception when they are covering hearings on high-profile matters.
Making laws is a complex process guided by volumes of rules and influenced by politics. While many bills are proposed each congressional session, few make it all the way through the process to be signed by the president and become law. Congress is responsible for passing legislation enacting the nation’s annual budget, which is frequently a difficult task.
In recent years, the membership of Congress has become increasingly diverse, as more women and minority group members have been elected. Still, the dominant profile of the member of Congress is an older, white male. In addition to their constitutional duties, members of Congress engage in a host of other activities, many of which are related to getting reelected. Members strive to maintain close connections with their constituents while serving in Washington. They seek to publicize their activities through the mainstream press as well as social media. Congressional staffers aid members in keeping abreast of policy issues, performing constituent service, and dealing with the press.


Topic 18 – Framing Intersecting Roofs in Metric
As with using metric in gable roofs and hip roofs, all processes are the same for using metric in intersecting roofs. Some key points to remember:
Review Questions
- The deduction to make at the tail of a valley rafter for a 38 mm fascia is _____.
- The deduction to make at the bottom of a valley jack rafter for a 38 mm valley rafter is _____.
- Using the following information and the roof shown in figure seven, find the following below:
- Rafter spacing 600 mm O.C.
- Overhang 600 mm
- Roof slope 400/1000
- All framing material 38 mm thick
- Double cheek cut
- Using figure 7 on the previous page, fill in the following table.
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Rafter # |
Name of Rafter |
Total Run |
Units of Run |
Unit Line Length |
Line Length |
Length of Rafter Tail |
Deduction at Top (mm) |
Deduction at Bottom (mm) |
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- B
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- 6000 mm
- 6038 mm
- 1800 mm
- 1819 mm
- 1800 mm
- 1819 mm
| Rafter # | Name of Rafter | Total Run | Units of Run | Unit Line Length | Line Length | Length of Rafter Tail | Deduction at Top (mm) | Deduction at Bottom (mm) |
| 1 | Hip Rafter | 1800 | 1.8 | 1470 | 2646 | 882 | 27 | 54 |
| 2 | Hip Jack Rafter | 1200 | 1.2 | 1077 | 1292.4 | 646.2 | 27 | 38 |
| 3 | Valley Cripple Jack | 1200 | 1.2 | 1077 | 1292.4 | 27 | 27 | |
| 4 | Supported Valley | 1200 | 1.2 | 1470 | 1764 | 882 | 19 | 54 |
| 5 | Hip-Valley Cripple Jack | 600 | 0.6 | 1077 | 646.2 | 27 | 27 | |
| 6 | Hip Rafter | 1200 | 1.2 | 1470 | 1764 | 882 | 27 | 54 |
| 7 | Valley Jack Rafter | 1800 | 1.8 | 1077 | 1938.5 | 19 | 27 | |
| 8 | Valley Rafter | 1800 | 1.8 | 1470 | 2646 | 882 | 27 | 54 |
| 9 | Valley Jack Rafter | 1200 | 1.2 | 1077 | 1292.4 | 19 | 27 | |
| 10 | Common Rafter | 1800 | 1.8 | 1077 | 1938.6 | 646.2 | 19 | 38 |
| 11 | Hip Jack Rafter | 1200 | 1.2 | 1077 | 1292.4 | 646.2 | 27 | 38 |
| 12 | Common Rafter | 1800 | 1.8 | 1077 | 1938.6 | 646.2 | 19 | 38 |
| 13 | Supporting Valley | 1800 | 1.8 | 1470 | 2646 | 882 | 27 | 54 |


Chapter 24: The Jazz Age: Redefining the Nation, 1919-1929
A New Generation
Learning Objectives
By the end of this section, you will be able to:
- Explain the factors that shaped the new morality and the changing role of women in the United States during the 1920s
- Describe the “new Negro” and the influence of the Harlem Renaissance
- Analyze the effects of prohibition on American society and culture
- Describe the character and main authors of the Lost Generation
The 1920s was a time of dramatic change in the United States. Many young people, especially those living in big cities, embraced a new morality that was much more permissive than that of previous generations. They listened to jazz music, especially in the nightclubs of Harlem. Although prohibition outlawed alcohol, criminal bootlegging and importing businesses thrived. The decade was not a pleasure cruise for everyone, however; in the wake of the Great War, many were left awaiting the promise of a new generation.
A NEW MORALITY
Many Americans were disillusioned in the post-World War I era, and their reactions took many forms. Rebellious American youth, in particular, adjusted to the changes by embracing a new morality that was far more permissive than the social mores of their parents. Many young women of the era shed their mother’s morality and adopted the dress and mannerisms of a flapper, the Jazz Age female stereotype, seeking the endless party. Flappers wore shorter skirts, shorter hair, and more makeup, and they drank and smoked with the boys (Figure 24.14). Flappers’ dresses emphasized straight lines from the shoulders to the knees, minimizing breasts and curves while highlighting legs and ankles. The male equivalent of a flapper was a “sheik,” although that term has not remained as strong in the American vernacular. At the time, however, many of these fads became a type of conformity, especially among college-aged youths, with the signature bob haircut of the flapper becoming almost universal–in both the United States and overseas.
As men and women pushed social and cultural boundaries in the Jazz Age, sexual mores changed and social customs grew more permissive. “Petting parties” or “necking parties” became the rage on college campuses. Psychologist Sigmund Freud and British “sexologist” Havelock Ellis emphasized that sex was a natural and pleasurable part of the human experience. Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, launched an information campaign on birth control to give women a choice in the realm in which suffrage had changed little–the family. The popularization of contraception and the private space that the automobile offered to teenagers and unwed couples also contributed to changes in sexual behavior.
Flappers and sheiks also took their cues from the high-flying romances they saw on movie screens and confessions in movie magazines of immorality on movie sets. Movie posters promised: “Brilliant men, beautiful jazz babies, champagne baths, midnight revels, petting parties in the purple dawn, all ending in one terrific smashing climax that makes you gasp.” And “neckers, petters, white kisses, red kisses, pleasure-mad daughters, sensation-craving mothers … the truth: bold, naked, sensational.”
Click and Explore
New dances and new music–especially jazz–also characterized the Jazz Age. Born out of the African American community, jazz was a uniquely American music. The innovative sound emerged from a number of different communities and from a number of different musical traditions such as blues and ragtime. By the 1920s, jazz had spread from African American clubs in New Orleans and Chicago to reach greater popularity in New York and abroad. One New York jazz establishment, the Cotton Club, became particularly famous and attracted large audiences of hip, young, and white flappers and sheiks to see black entertainers play jazz (Figure 24.15).
THE “NEW WOMAN”
The Jazz Age and the proliferation of the flapper lifestyle of the 1920s should not be seen merely as the product of postwar disillusionment and newfound prosperity. Rather, the search for new styles of dress and new forms of entertainment like jazz was part of a larger women’s rights movement. The early 1920s, especially with the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment guaranteeing full voting rights to women, was a period that witnessed the expansion of women’s political power. The public flaunting of social and sexual norms by flappers represented an attempt to match gains in political equality with gains in the social sphere. Women were increasingly leaving the Victorian era norms of the previous generation behind, as they broadened the concept of women’s liberation to include new forms of social expression such as dance, fashion, women’s clubs, and forays into college and the professions.
Nor did the struggle for women’s rights through the promotion and passage of legislation cease in the 1920s. In 1921, Congress passed the Promotion of the Welfare and Hygiene of Maternity and Infancy Act, also known as the Sheppard-Towner Act, which earmarked $1.25 million for well-baby clinics and educational programs, as well as nursing. This funding dramatically reduced the rate of infant mortality.
Two years later, in 1923, Alice Paul drafted and promoted an Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) that promised to end all sex discrimination by guaranteeing that “Men and women shall have equal rights throughout the United States and every place subject to its jurisdiction.”
Yet, ironically, at precisely the time when the Progressive movement was achieving its long-sought-after goals, the movement itself was losing steam and the Progressive Era was coming to a close. As the heat of Progressive politics grew less intense, voter participation from both sexes declined over the course of the 1920s. After the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, many women believed that they had accomplished their goals and dropped out of the movement. As a result, the proposed ERA stalled (the ERA eventually passed Congress almost fifty years later in 1972, but then failed to win ratification by a sufficient number of states), and, by the end of the 1920s, Congress even allowed funding for the Sheppard-Towner Act to lapse.
The growing lethargy toward women’s rights was happening at a time when an increasing number of women were working for wages in the U.S. economy–not only in domestic service, but in retail, healthcare and education, offices, and manufacturing. Beginning in the 1920s, women’s participation in the labor force increased steadily. However, most were paid less than men for the same type of work based on the rationale that they did not have to support a family. While the employment of single and unmarried women had largely won social acceptance, married women often suffered the stigma that they were working for pin money–frivolous additional discretionary income.
THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE AND THE NEW NEGRO
It wasn’t only women who found new forms of expression in the 1920s. African Americans were also expanding their horizons and embracing the concept of the “new Negro.” The decade witnessed the continued Great Migration of African Americans to the North, with over half a million fleeing the strict Jim Crow laws of the South. Life in the northern states, as many African Americans discovered, was hardly free of discrimination and segregation. Even without Jim Crow, businesses, property owners, employers, and private citizens typically practiced de facto segregation, which could be quite stifling and oppressive. Nonetheless, many southern blacks continued to move north into segregated neighborhoods that were already bursting at the seams, because the North, at the very least, offered two tickets toward black progress: schools and the vote. The black population of New York City doubled during the decade. As a result, Harlem, a neighborhood at the northern end of Manhattan, became a center for Afro-centric art, music, poetry, and politics. Political expression in the Harlem of the 1920s ran the gamut, as some leaders advocated a return to Africa, while others fought for inclusion and integration.
Revived by the wartime migration and fired up by the white violence of the postwar riots, urban blacks developed a strong cultural expression in the 1920s that came to be known as the Harlem Renaissance. In this rediscovery of black culture, African American artists and writers formulated an independent black culture and encouraged racial pride, rejecting any emulation of white American culture. Claude McKay’s poem “If We Must Die” called on African Americans to start fighting back in the wake of the Red Summer riots of 1919 (discussed in a previous chapter, Figure 24.16). Langston Hughes, often nicknamed the “poet laureate” of the movement, invoked sacrifice and the just cause of civil rights in “The Colored Soldier,” while another author of the movement, Zora Neale Hurston, celebrated the life and dialect of rural blacks in a fictional, all-black town in Florida. Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God was only published posthumously in 1937.
The new Negro found political expression in a political ideology that celebrated African Americans distinct national identity. This Negro nationalism, as some referred to it, proposed that African Americans had a distinct and separate national heritage that should inspire pride and a sense of community. An early proponent of such nationalism was W. E. B. Du Bois. One of the founders of the NAACP, a brilliant writer and scholar, and the first African American to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard, Du Bois openly rejected assumptions of white supremacy. His conception of Negro nationalism encouraged Africans to work together in support of their own interests, promoted the elevation of black literature and cultural expression, and, most famously, embraced the African continent as the true homeland of all ethnic Africans–a concept known as Pan-Africanism.
Taking Negro nationalism to a new level was Marcus Garvey. Like many black Americans, the Jamaican immigrant had become utterly disillusioned with the prospect of overcoming white racism in the United States in the wake of the postwar riots and promoted a “Back to Africa” movement. To return African Americans to a presumably more welcoming home in Africa, Garvey founded the Black Star Steamship Line. He also started the United Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), which attracted thousands of primarily lower-income working people. UNIA members wore colorful uniforms and promoted the doctrine of a “negritude” that reversed the color hierarchy of white supremacy, prizing blackness and identifying light skin as a mark of inferiority. Intellectual leaders like Du Bois, whose lighter skin put him low on Garvey’s social order, considered the UNIA leader a charlatan. Garvey was eventually imprisoned for mail fraud and then deported, but his legacy set the stage for Malcolm X and the Black Power movement of the 1960s.
PROHIBITION
At precisely the same time that African Americans and women were experimenting with new forms of social expression, the country as a whole was undergoing a process of austere and dramatic social reform in the form of alcohol prohibition. After decades of organizing to reduce or end the consumption of alcohol in the United States, temperance groups and the Anti-Saloon League finally succeeded in pushing through the Eighteenth Amendment in 1919, which banned the manufacture, sale, and transportation of intoxicating liquors (Figure 24.17). The law proved difficult to enforce, as illegal alcohol soon poured in from Canada and the Caribbean, and rural Americans resorted to home-brewed “moonshine.” The result was an eroding of respect for law and order, as many people continued to drink illegal liquor. Rather than bringing about an age of sobriety, as Progressive reformers had hoped, it gave rise to a new subculture that included illegal importers, interstate smuggling (or bootlegging), clandestine saloons referred to as “speakeasies,” hipflasks, cocktail parties, and the organized crime of trafficking liquor.
Prohibition also revealed deep political divisions in the nation. The Democratic Party found itself deeply divided between urban, northern “wets” who hated the idea of abstinence, and rural, southern “dries” who favored the amendment. This divided the party and opened the door for the Republican Party to gain ascendancy in the 1920s. All politicians, including Woodrow Wilson, Herbert Hoover, Robert La Follette, and Franklin D. Roosevelt, equivocated in their support for the law. Publicly, they catered to the Anti-Saloon League; however, they failed to provide funding for enforcement.
Prohibition sparked a rise in organized crime. “Scarface” Al Capone (Figure 24.18) ran an extensive bootlegging and criminal operation known as the Chicago Outfit or Chicago mafia. By 1927, Capone’s organization included a number of illegal activities including bootlegging, prostitution, gambling, loan sharking, and even murder. His operation was earning him more than $100 million annually, and many local police were on his payroll. Although he did not have a monopoly on crime, his organizational structure was better than many other criminals of his era. His liquor trafficking business and his Chicago soup kitchens during the Great Depression led some Americans to liken Capone to a modern-day Robin Hood. Still, Capone was eventually imprisoned for eleven years for tax evasion, including a stint in California’s notorious Alcatraz prison.
THE LOST GENERATION
As the country struggled with the effects and side-effects of prohibition, many young intellectuals endeavored to come to grips with a lingering sense of disillusionment. World War I, fundamentalism, and the Red Scare–a pervasive American fear of Communist infiltrators prompted by the success of the Bolshevik Revolution–all left their mark on these intellectuals. Known as the Lost Generation, writers like F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Sinclair Lewis, Edith Wharton, and John Dos Passos expressed their hopelessness and despair by skewering the middle class in their work. They felt alienated from society, so they tried to escape (some literally) to criticize it. Many lived an expatriate life in Paris for the decade, although others went to Rome or Berlin.
The Lost Generation writer that best exemplifies the mood of the 1920s was F. Scott Fitzgerald, now considered one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century. His debut novel, This Side of Paradise, describes a generation of youth “grown up to find all gods dead, all wars fought, all faith in man shaken.” The Great Gatsby, published in 1925, exposed the doom that always follows the fun, fast-lived life. Fitzgerald depicted the modern millionaire Jay Gatsby living a profligate life: unscrupulous, coarse, and in love with another man’s wife. Both Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda lived this life as well, squandering the money he made from his writing.
F. Scott Fitzgerald on the 1920s
In the 1920s, Fitzgerald was one of the most celebrated authors of his day, publishing This Side of Paradise, The Beautiful and Damned, and The Great Gatsby in quick succession. However, his profligate lifestyle with his wife Zelda sapped their funds, and Fitzgerald had to struggle to maintain their lavish lifestyle. Below is an excerpt from “The Crack-Up,” a personal essay by Fitzgerald originally published in Esquire in which he describes his “good life” during the 1920s.
It seemed a romantic business to be a successful literary man–you were not ever going to be as famous as a movie star but what note you had was probably longer-lived; you were never going to have the power of a man of strong political or religious convictions but you were certainly more independent. Of course within the practice of your trade you were forever unsatisfied–but I, for one, would not have chosen any other.
As the Twenties passed, with my own twenties marching a little ahead of them, my two juvenile regrets–at not being big enough (or good enough) to play football in college, and at not getting overseas during the war–resolved themselves into childish waking dreams of imaginary heroism that were good enough to go to sleep on in restless nights. The big problems of life seemed to solve themselves, and if the business of fixing them was difficult, it made one too tired to think of more general problems.
–F. Scott Fitzgerald, “The Crack-Up,” 1936
How does Fitzgerald describe his life in the 1920s? How did his interpretation reflect the reality of the decade?
Equally idiosyncratic and disillusioned was writer Ernest Hemingway (Figure 24.19). He lived a peripatetic and adventurous lifestyle in Europe, Cuba, and Africa, working as an ambulance driver in Italy during World War I and traveling to Spain in the 1930s to cover the civil war there. His experiences of war and tragedy stuck with him, emerging in colorful scenes in his novels The Sun Also Rises (1926), A Farewell to Arms (1929), and For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940). In 1952, his novella, The Old Man and the Sea, won the Pulitzer Prize. Two years later, he won the Nobel Prize in Literature for this book and his overall influence on contemporary style.
Click and Explore
Listen to an audio of Hemingway’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech.
Not all Lost Generation writers were like Fitzgerald or Hemingway. The writing of Sinclair Lewis, rather than expressing a defined disillusionment, was more influenced by the Progressivism of the previous generation. In Babbitt (1922), he examined the “sheep following the herd” mentality that conformity promoted. He satirized American middle-class life as pleasure seeking and mindless. Similarly, writer Edith Wharton celebrated life in old New York, a vanished society, in The Age of Innocence, in 1920. Wharton came from a very wealthy, socialite family in New York, where she was educated by tutors and never attended college. She lived for many years in Europe; during the Great War, she worked in Paris helping women establish businesses.


Chapter 13: Works Cited
How to Cite and Reference with MLA
When paraphrasing ideas or summarizing the facts in a piece of writing, parenthetical citation is used to credit the original author. You do this by including the author’s last name and the page number(s) in parentheses at the end of the sentence:
The media is more interested in reporting on Serena’s appearance than her spectacular athletic abilities (Schultz 338).
Another method is to include the author’s name in the sentence with the page number(s) in parentheses at the end of the sentence.
Schultz argues that the media is more interested in writing about Serena’s appearance than her spectacular athletic abilities (338).
Include the full reference of the journal article in the Works Cited list.
Schultz, Jaime. “Reading the catsuit: Serena Williams and the production of blackness at the 2002 US Open.” Journal of Sport and Social Issues, 29(3), 2005, pp. 338-357.
In this MLA example of in-text citing, the author’s name is used in the introductory phrase (a.k.a. signal phrase), the page number is in parentheses and follows the sentence:
According to Ruffo, his poems were meant to create a connection between the paintings and actual events in Morrisseau’s life (9).
Include the full reference in the bibliography at the end of your paper like this:
Ruffo, Armand G. The Thunderbird Poems. Harbour Publishing, 2015.
MLA Reference examples
Book
Vowel, Chelsea. Indigenous Writes: A Guide to First Nations, Métis, and Inuit Issues in Canada. HighWater Press, 2016.
Chapter in a book
Fong, Eric. “Residential Segregation of Visible Minority Groups in Toronto.” Asian Canadian studies reader, edited by Roland Sintos Colomba and Gordon Pon, University of Toronto Press, 2017.
Scholarly journal article
Deflem, Mathieu. “Professor Goes Gaga: Teaching Lady Gaga and the Sociology of Fame.” The American Sociologist, vol. 44, no. 2, 2013, pp. 117-131.
government document available online
Mackay, Robin, Karin Phillips, and Canada. Parliamentary Information and Research Service. The Legal Regulation of Marijuana in Canada and Selected Other Countries. vol. 2016-94-E., Library of Parliament, 2016. lop.parl.ca/Content/LOP/ResearchPublications/2016-94-e.pdf
Lecture
Ehret, Stephanie. “Introduction and overview of the Canadian criminal justice system” CRM 100: Introduction to Canadian criminal justice [lecture]. Ryerson University, 18 January 2018.
Online Video
Rose, Martine, director. Trawna Tuh Belvul. National Film Board of Canada, 1994. www.nfb.ca/film/trawna_tuh_belvul/
Article in a magazine
Cole, Desmond. “The Skin I’m in.” Toronto Life, vol. 49, 2015.
Tweet
@ladygaga. “In our documentary the #chronicillness #chronicpain I deal w/ is #Fibromyalgia I wish to help raise awareness & connect people who have it.” Twitter, 12 Sept. 2017. twitter.com/ladygaga/status/907571825294675968
YouTube
Stoehr, Kali & Eisen, Anna. “Research 101: Scholarship is a Conversation.” Youtube, 2014. youtu.be/YGia3gNyHDM
Music
Beyoncé. “Formation.” Lemonade, Parkwood Entertainment, 2016, www.beyonce.com/album/lemonade-visual-album/
Art
Pratt, Christopher. Young Girl with Seashells. 1965. Memorial University Art Gallery Permanent Collection, Corner Brook.


Part I. Introduction
I-3. Introduction to agent-based modeling
In this chapter, we briefly explain what agent-based modeling (ABM) is about, including a paradigmatic example. We also try to clarify the relationship between evolutionary game theory and agent-based modeling, and offer some arguments in favor of implementing evolutionary models using an agent-based approach. Finally, we provide some references to other books that can be used to learn more about how to implement agent-based models.
1. What is agent-based modeling?
Agent-based modeling (ABM) is a methodology used to build formal models of real-world systems that are made up by individual units (such as e.g. atoms, cells, animals, people or institutions) which repeatedly interact among themselves and/or with their environment.
The essence of agent-based modeling
The defining feature of the agent-based modeling approach is that it establishes a direct and explicit correspondence
- between the individual units in the target system to be modeled and the parts of the model that represent these units (i.e. the agents), and also
- between the interactions of the individual units in the target system and the interactions of the corresponding agents in the model (figure 1).
This approach contrasts with e.g. equation-based modeling, where entities of the target system may be represented via average properties or via single representative agents.
Thus, in an agent-based model, the individual units of the system and their repeated interactions are explicitly and individually represented in the model (Edmonds, 2001).[1] Beyond this, no further assumptions are made in agent-based modeling.
At this point, you may be wondering whether game theory is part of ABM, since in game theory players are indeed explicitly and individually represented in the models.[2] The key to answer that question is the last sentence in the box above, i.e. “Beyond this, no further assumptions are made in agent-based modeling“. There are certainly many disciplines (e.g. game theory and cellular automata theory) that analyze models where individuals and their interactions are represented explicitly. The key distinction is that these disciplines make further assumptions, i.e. impose additional structure on their models. These additional assumptions constrain the type of models that are analyzed and, by doing so, they often allow for more accurate predictions and/or greater understanding within their (somewhat more limited) scope. Thus, when one encounters a model that fits perfectly into the framework of a particular discipline (e.g. game theory), it seems more appropriate to use the more specific name of the particular discipline, and leave the term “agent-based” for those models which satisfy the defining feature of ABM mentioned above and they do not currently fit in any more specific area of study.
The last sentence in the box also uncovers a key feature of ABM: its flexibility. In principle, you can make your agent-based model as complex as you wish. This has pros and cons. Adding complexity to your model allows you to study any phenomenon you may be interested in, but it also makes analyzing and understanding the model harder (or even sometimes practically impossible) using the most advanced mathematical techniques. Because of this, agent-based models are generally implemented in a programming language and explored using computer simulation. This is so common that the terms agent-based modeling and agent-based simulation are often used interchangeably. The following is a list of some features that traditionally have been difficult to analyze mathematically, and for which agent-based modeling can be useful (Epstein and Axtell, 1996):
- Agents’ heterogeneity. Since agents are explicitly represented in the model, they can be as heterogeneous as the modeler deems appropriate.
- Interdependencies between processes (e.g. demographic, economic, biological, geographical, technological) that have been traditionally studied in different disciplines, and are not often analyzed together. There is no restriction on the type of rules that can be implemented in an agent-based model, so models can include rules that link disparate aspects of the world that are often studied in different disciplines.
- Out-of-equilibrium dynamics. Dynamics are inherent to ABM. Running a simulation consists in applying the rules that define the model over and over, so agent-based models almost invariably include some notion of time within them. Equilibria are never imposed a priori: they may emerge as an outcome of the simulation, or they may not.
- The micro-macro link. ABM is particularly well suited to study how global phenomena emerge from the interactions among individuals, and also how these emergent global phenomena may constrain and shape back individuals’ actions.
- Local interactions and the role of physical space. The fact that agents and their environment are represented explicitly in ABM makes it particularly straightforward and natural to model local interactions (e.g. via networks).
As you can imagine, introducing any of the aspects outlined above in an agent-based model often means that the model becomes mathematically intractable, at least to some extent. However, in this book we will learn that, in many cases, there are various aspects of agent-based models that can be analytically solved, or described using formal approximation results. Our view is that the most useful agent-based models lie at the boundaries of theoretical understanding, and help us push these boundaries. They are advances sufficiently small so that simplified versions of them (or certain aspects of their behaviour) can be fully understood in mathematical terms –thus retaining its analytical rigour–, but they are steps large enough to significantly extend our understanding beyond what is achievable using the most advanced mathematical techniques available.
In my personal (albeit biased) view, the best simulations are those which just peek over the rim of theoretical understanding, displaying mechanisms about which one can still obtain causal intuitions. Probst (1999)
2. What is an agent?
In this book we will use the term agent to refer to a distinct part of our (computational) model that is meant to represent a decision-maker. Agents could represent human beings, non-human animals, institutions, firms, etc. The agents in our models will always play a game, so in this book we will use the term agent and the term player interchangeably.
Agents have individually-owned variables, which describe their internal state (e.g. a strategy), and are able to conduct certain computations or tasks, i.e. they are able to run instructions (e.g. to update their strategy). These instructions are sometimes called decision rules, or rules of behavior, and most often imply some kind of interaction with other agents or with the environment.
The following are some of the individually-owned variables that the agents we are going to implement in this book may have:
- strategy (a number)
- payoff (a number)
- my-coplayers (the set of agents with whom this agent plays the game)
- color (the color of this agent)
And the following are examples of instructions that the agents in most of our models will be able to run:
- to play (play a certain game with my-coplayers and set the payoff appropriately)
- to update-strategy (revise strategy according to a certain decision rule)
- to update-color (set color according to strategy)
3. A paradigmatic example
In this section we present a model that captures the spirit of ABM. The model implements the main features of a family of models proposed by Sakoda (1949, 1971) and –independently– by Schelling (1969, 1971, 1978).[3][4] Specifically, here we present a computer implementation put forward by Edmonds and Hales (2005).[5]
In this model there are 133 blue agents and 133 orange agents who live in a 2-dimensional grid made up of 20×20 cells (figure 2). Agents are initially located at random on the grid. The neighborhood of a cell is defined by the eight neighboring cells (i.e. the eight cells which surround it).[6]
Agents may be happy or unhappy. An agent is happy if the proportion of other agents of its same colour in its neighbourhood is greater or equal than a certain threshold (%-similar-wanted), which is a parameter of the model; otherwise the agent is said to be unhappy. Agents with no neighbors are assumed to be happy regardless of the value of %-similar-wanted. In each iteration of the model one unhappy agent is randomly selected to move to a random empty cell in the lattice.
As an example, the two agents surrounded by a circle in figure 2 have 2 out of 5 neighbors of the same color as them, i.e. 40%. This means that in simulation runs where %-similar-wanted ≤ 40% these agents would be happy, and would not move. On the other hand, in simulations where %-similar-wanted > 40% these two agents would move to a random location.
Individually-owned variables and instructions
In this model, agent’s individually-owned variables are:
- color, which can be either blue or orange,
- (xcor, ycor), which determine the agent’s location on the grid, and
- happy?, which indicates whether the agent is happy or not.
Agents are able to run the following instructions:
- to move, to change the agent’s location to a random empty cell, and
- to update-happiness, to update the agent’s individually-owned variable happy?.
Now imagine that we simulate a society where agents require at least 60% of their neighbors to be of the same color as them in order to be happy (i.e. %-similar-wanted = 60%). These are pretty strong segregationist preferences, so one would expect a fairly clear pattern of spatial segregation at the end. The following video shows a representative run. You may wish to run the simulations yourself downloading this model’s code.
As expected, the final outcome of the simulation shows clearly distinctive ghettos. To measure the level of segregation of a certain spatial pattern we define a global variable named avg-%similar, which is the average proportion (across agents) of an agent’s neighbors that are the same color as the agent. Extensive Monte Carlo simulation shows that a good estimate of the expected avg-%similar is about 95.7% when %-similar-wanted is 60%.
What is really surprising is that even with only mild segregationist preferences, such as %-similar-wanted = 40%, we still obtain fairly segregated spatial patterns (expected avg-%similar ≈ 82.7%). The following video shows a representative run.
And even with segregationist preferences as weak as %-similar-wanted = 30% (i.e. you are happy unless strictly less than 30% of your neighbors are of the same color as you), the emergent spatial patterns show significant segregation (expected avg-%similar ≈ 74.7%). The following video shows a representative run.
So this agent-based model illustrates how strong spatial segregation can result from only weakly segregationist preferences (e.g. trying to avoid an acute minority status). This model has been enriched in a number of directions (e.g. to include heterogeneity between and within groups),[7] but the implementation discussed here is sufficient to illustrate a non-trivial phenomenon that emerges from agents’ individual choices and their interactions.
4. Agent-based modeling and evolutionary game theory
Given that models in Evolutionary Game Theory (EGT) comprise many individuals who repeatedly interact among them and occasionally revise their individually-owned strategy, it seems clear that agent-based modelling is certainly an appropriate methodology to build EGT models. Therefore, the question is whether other approaches may be more appropriate or convenient. This is an important issue, since nowadays most models in EGT are equation-based, and therefore –in general– more amenable to mathematical analysis than agent-based models. This is a clear advantage for equation-based models. Why bother with agent-based modeling then?
The reason is that mathematical tractability often comes at a price: equation-based models tend to incorporate several assumptions that are made solely for the purpose of guaranteeing mathematical tractability. Examples include assuming that the population is infinite, or assuming that revising agents are able to evaluate strategies’ expected payoffs. These assumptions are clearly made for mathematical convenience, since there are no infinite populations in the real world, and –in general– it seems more natural to assume that agents’ choices are based on information obtained from experiences with various strategies, or from observations of others’ experiences. Are assumptions made for mathematical convenience harmless? We cannot know unless we study models where such assumptions are not made. And this is where agent-based modelling can play an important role.
Agent-based modeling gives us the potential to build models closer to the real-world systems that we want to study, because in an agent-based model we are free to choose the sort of assumptions that we deem appropriate in purely scientific terms. We may not be able to fully analyze all aspects of the resulting agent-based model mathematically, but we will certainly be able to explore it using computer simulation, and this exploration can help us assess the impact of assumptions that are made only for mathematical tractability. In this way, we will be able to shed light on questions such as: how large must a population be for the mathematical model to be a good description of the dynamics of the finite-population model? and, how much do dynamics change if agents cannot evaluate strategies’ expected payoffs with infinite precision?
5. How can I learn about agent-based modeling?
A wonderful classic book to learn the fundamental concepts and appreciate the kind of models you can build using ABM is Epstein and Axtell (1996). In this short book, the authors show how to build an artificial society where agents, using extremely simple rules, are able to engage in a wide range of activities such as sex, cultural exchange, trade, combat, disease transmission, etc. Epstein and Axtell’s (1996) interdisciplinary book shows how complex patterns can emerge from very simple rules of interaction.
Epstein and Axtell’s (1996) seminal book focuses on the fundamental concepts without discussing any code whatsoever. The following books are also excellent introductions to scientific agent-based modeling, and all of them make use of NetLogo: Gilbert (2007), Railsback and Grimm (2019), Wilensky and Rand (2015), Janssen (2020) and Smaldino (2023). Hamill and Gilbert (2016) discuss the implementation of several NetLogo models in the context of Economics. Most of these models are significantly more sophisticated than the ones we implement and analyze in this book.
- These three videos by Bruce Edmonds and Michael Price and Uri Wilensky nicely describe what ABM is about. ↵
- The extent to which repeated interactions are explicitly represented in traditional game theoretical models is not so clear. ↵
- Hegselmann (2017) provides a detailed and fascinating account of the history of this family of models. ↵
- Our implementation is not a precise instance of neither Sakoda's nor Schelling's family of models, because unhappy agents in our model move to a random location. We chose this migration regime to make the code simpler. For details, see Hegselmann (2017, footnote 124). A faithful NetLogo implementation of the model described in Schelling (1971, pp. 154-158), which also includes other migration regimes, can be run online in this link (Izquierdo et al., 2022). ↵
- Izquierdo et al. (2009, appendix B) analyze this model as a Markov chain. ↵
- Cells on a side have five neighbors and cells at a corner have three neighbors. ↵
- See Aydinonat (2007). ↵


Why It Matters: Culture
Why explain and evaluate culture?
 Different groups have found various answers to the question, “How shall we live?” When a group of humans successfully found a way to survive, they began to value that approach to life. They built beliefs around their survival and acted on those beliefs and values. Such activities became normal to that group, and created their culture. Some cultures appear quite similar to our own while others seem extremely different.
Through their development, some cultures became increasingly complex while others remained simple. Anthropologist, scientist, and author Jared Diamond puzzled over this question (known as Yali’s question in his book Guns, Germs, and Steel) and attempted to understand why some cultures have dramatically more “stuff” than others.
If you have traveled or lived outside the United States, or even if you have traveled within our own borders, across the country or perhaps simply across town, you already know that different groups of people have responded to the needs of life through creating different customs. Since the United States is one of the most diverse countries in the world, gaining an understanding of how other people “do” their culture helps us to better understand and interact with people at home and abroad.  Understanding the basics of culture helps us to understand one another. Consider the following story:
An American business decided to combine a project with a sister company in India. The company made plans to send five employees over for a long-term stay in order to help orient the Indian employees to the company and provide some training and perhaps build some relationships. Once they landed in India, one of the Americans found that all of her luggage had been lost! She had to go out and purchase clothing and shoes to wear for their extended stay until her luggage might be located. Because she purchased clothing styled and made in India, she had no leather belts, jackets, or shoes and she was garbed in more traditional Indian clothing. As it turned out, the new employees took to her much more readily because she dressed as they did. They felt much more comfortable with her than they did with the other Americans who dressed “strangely.”
<a style="margin-left: 16px;" target="_blank" href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vy-T6DtTF-BbMfpVEI7VP_R7w2A4anzYZLXR8Pk4Fu4"


| singular | plural | |
|---|---|---|
| 1st person | me me | nos us |
| 2nd person | te you | |
| 3rd person | le him/her/you formal | les them/you plural |
Description
An indirect object is a person who receives the action of a verb indirectly; it says to whom or for whom something is done. In Spanish the indirect object is usually preceded by the preposition a and in English by the preposition to. If there is an indirect object in a sentence, it will usually be accompanied by the indirect object pronoun. The indirect object pronoun must match the person and number of the indirect object. In the sentence below, los hijos is the indirect object, accompanied by the pronoun les; both of which are third person plural.
Es más difícil aquí porque aquí les dan más privilegios a los hijos.It’s harder here because here they give children more privileges.Also, the indirect object pronoun may used by itself to replace an indirect object. For example, a los hijos can be removed from the previous sentence to resulting in:
Es más difícil aquí porque aquí les dan más privilegios.It’s harder here because here they give them more privileges.
Placement
There are two places where indirect object pronouns can be placed.
- Before a conjugated verb
- Attached to the end of the verb, ONLY IF the verb is not conjugated, such as infinitives or gerunds or if the verb is an affirmative informal command.
In first example, the indirect object pronoun me is found before the conjugated verb daba. In the second example, the the indirect object pronoun le is found before the conjugated verb da. In the third example, the the indirect object pronoun le is attached to the infinitive decir.
Cuando estaba en la primaria recuerdo que me daban mi lonche y me daban mi dinero para que yo gastara en la escuela.When I was in elementary school, I remember that they gave me lunch and they gave me my money for me to spend in school.Es algo que el gobierno americano le da a la gente que viene aquí con una visa extranjera.It’s something that the American government gives to people who come here with a foreign visa.Después me arrepentía de decirle tantas cosas feas.Later I regretted saying mean things to him.


66 Harriet and Gloria go to the pictures to see Shirley Temple; Ruth goes ice skating
December 30, 1934
Dear Corinna,
Sunday P.M. I am listening to the Mpls. Symphony Orchestra. The three children have gone skating. The Passoneaus had some ice shoe skates bequeathed to them by Mpls. cousins and Amy let me have an extra pair. Gloria goes down and staggers around on them and I am going down to try them pretty soon. I don’t go outdoors enuff since it got so cold—I haven’t been down town for a week. I will ask Myrtle A. to go with me.
There were 33 at S.S. this morning. I wore my new scarf and mittens.  Your “green” letter arrived this morning. You can use it to write to me on—I know you enjoyed having her over that night and giving her a treat. Winnie gave me a box of writing paper and goodness knows I need such since I have a daughter in New York.
 Yesterday I went in and Myrtle evened it for me—she was surprised to see I had started it already. It’s such an attractive pattern that I just had to get right at it. I’ll enclose a sample.
Friday eve H and G went to see Shirley Temple in Stand up and Cheer. I was too tired to go. They were so enthusiastic about it when they came home.
Later—Well now I have been skating. I went alone as Myrtle went somewhere. It was fun—I fell twice on my back but my fur lined coat was a good pad. Una came down there and when I went I let her use my skates. She is always so sweet to me. Then when I came home I hated to go in so I went over to see Betty Lundgren. I didn’t get your letter written but I enjoyed being out. There were a lot of skaters—the ice is good. They flooded it again yesterday. I ought to go down every day for half an hour.
There was a Fireman’s Dance here Friday night at Strong’s garage. Myron and Darrel Dowdell were down there and they saw a drunk man come staggering past the largest plate glass window in front—fall against it and his head went thru. He was cut some but he pulled his head out and started to run. Myron and Darrel told some of the men and they ran and caught him—he was put in jail. After Daddy and Myron got to bed the same night the phone rang and Reuben Hovey phoned that his car was in the ditch—he too was drunk and ran off the road. Daddy was so tired, so Myron and Evenson went and pulled Hovey out. Myron slept till noon that day.
Milo Hallberg came in yesterday and thanked for his S.S. candy bag and your card. He said to tell you he’d send you a card soon. He has to be back to his job tomorrow.
Winifred has already made lots of friends where she works. The other day she even introduced a boy to Byron who had been there as long as Byron has. Aunt Frances says Winnie will make her way anywhere with her pleasant sociable disposition. Aunt Frances thinks it fine you are doing well in Typing. She says you can get your assignments ahead in Shorthand and when you stay home in March and keep right up with your class—you see she is teaching the same that you are taking. Well I must get ready for church. Love to all, From your Mother.


Chapter LXXIV
“There is no dread that fully pleaseth God in us but reverent dread”
FOR I understand [that there be] four manner of dreads. One is the dread of an affright that cometh to a man suddenly by frailty. This dread doeth good, for it helpeth to purge man, as doeth bodily sickness or such other pain as is not sin. For all such pains help man if they be patiently taken. The second is dread of pain, whereby man is stirred and wakened from sleep of sin. He is not able for the time to perceive the soft comfort of the Holy Ghost, till he have understanding of this dread of pain, of bodily death, of spiritual enemies; and this dread stirreth us to seek comfort and mercy of God, and thus this dread helpeth us,[1] and enableth us to have contrition by the blissful touching of the Holy Ghost. The third is doubtful dread. Doubtful dread in as much as it draweth to despair, God will have it turned in us into love by the knowing of love: that is to say, that the bitterness of doubt be turned into the sweetness of natural love by grace. For it may never please our Lord that His servants doubt in His Goodness. The fourth is reverent dread: for there is no dread that fully pleaseth God in us but reverent dread. And that is full soft, for the more it is had, the less it is felt for sweetness of love.
Love and Dread are brethren, and they are rooted in us by the Goodness of our Maker, and they shall never be taken from us without end. We have of nature to love and we have of grace to love: and we have of nature to dread and we have of grace to dread. It belongeth to the Lordship and to the Fatherhood to be dreaded, as it belongeth to the Goodness to be loved: and it belongeth to us that are His servants and His children to dread Him for Lordship and Fatherhood, as it belongeth to us to love Him for Goodness.
And though this reverent-dread and love be not parted asunder, yet they are not both one, but they are two in property and in working, and neither of them may be had without other. Therefore I am sure, he that loveth, he dreadeth, though that he feel it but a little.
All dreads other than reverent dread that are proffered to us, though they come under the colour of holiness yet are not so true, and hereby may they be known asunder.—That dread that maketh us hastily to flee from all that is not good and fall into our Lord’s breast, as the Child into the Mother’s bosom,[2] with all our intent and with all our mind, knowing our feebleness and our great need, knowing His everlasting goodness and His blissful love, only seeking to Him for salvation, cleaving to [Him] with sure trust: that dread that bringeth us into this working, it is natural,[3] gracious, good and true. And all that is contrary to this, either it is wrong, or it is mingled with wrong. Then is this the remedy, to know them both and refuse the wrong.
For the natural property of dread which we have in this life by the gracious working of the Holy Ghost, the same shall be in heaven afore God, gentle, courteous, and full delectable. And thus we shall in love be homely and near to God, and we shall in dread be gentle and courteous to God: and both alike equal.
Desire we of our Lord God to dread Him reverently, to love Him meekly, to trust in Him mightily; for when we dread Him reverently and love Him meekly our trust is never in vain. For the more that we trust, and the more mightily, the more we please and worship our Lord that we trust in. And if we fail in this reverent dread and meek love (as God forbid we should!), our trust shall soon be misruled for the time. And therefore it needeth us much to pray our Lord of grace that we may have this reverent dread and meek love, of His gift, in heart and in work. For without this, no man may please God.