"Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered. I myself would say that it had merely been detected"
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America, in Wilde's hands, becomes less a continent than a punchline about empire and ego. The difference between "discovered" and "detected" is tiny on the page and devastating in implication: "discovered" flatters the discoverer, implying brilliance, destiny, even romance. "Detected" belongs to police work and lab reports. It suggests something obvious finally got noticed, not something heroically brought into being. Wilde is puncturing the self-mythology of a young superpower that loved to narrate itself as exceptional, chosen, newly born.
The line also needles the whole Columbus-era vocabulary that turns invasion into achievement. If America was "detected", then the pomp of European "discovery" looks like a PR campaign for taking credit. Wilde's irony lands because he doesn't bother arguing; he downgrades the verb and lets the prestige drain out of the story on its own.
Context matters: Wilde toured the United States in 1882, performing the role America wanted from him - the exotic aesthete - while quietly observing its hunger for cultural legitimacy. Calling America "undiscovered" reads like a sly reversal: the country is geographically mapped, economically roaring, yet still culturally unfinished, still auditioning for itself. Wilde's wit is doing double duty, mocking both the colonial language that named the New World and the New World's anxiety to be more than a place on a map.
The line also needles the whole Columbus-era vocabulary that turns invasion into achievement. If America was "detected", then the pomp of European "discovery" looks like a PR campaign for taking credit. Wilde's irony lands because he doesn't bother arguing; he downgrades the verb and lets the prestige drain out of the story on its own.
Context matters: Wilde toured the United States in 1882, performing the role America wanted from him - the exotic aesthete - while quietly observing its hunger for cultural legitimacy. Calling America "undiscovered" reads like a sly reversal: the country is geographically mapped, economically roaring, yet still culturally unfinished, still auditioning for itself. Wilde's wit is doing double duty, mocking both the colonial language that named the New World and the New World's anxiety to be more than a place on a map.
Quote Details
| Topic | Witty One-Liners |
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