Dandyism ln Restoration Comedy With Special Reference To William Wycherley And William Congreve

Abstract

Most critical views that dealt with the Restoration comedy have paid characters such as fops, beaux and coxcombs, a little heed. They minimized the role of such characters and

neglected their essential function in the literary text. The negligence such characters suffered from was the incentive that drew my attention to trace their development during the Restoration period with a view to classifying them as ancestors of the nineteenth-century dandy. The present thesis aims at pointing out the formative features of dandyism in Restoration comedy with special reference to William Wycherley and William Congreve. Selection of some plays was inevitable to avoid repetition. The essential consideration in selecting plays was to be reflective of the early and late features in the writers' career. The choice of the topic of this research has been motivated by several objectives: First, to classify fops, beaux, and coxcombs as bases of the dandy; second, to reconsider the artistic worth of the Restoration dandy with regard to his ethics; third, to refute whatever bestowed to the dandy as a minor character.