Oscar Wilde
Student of “aesthetic movement” - which rejected older Victorian insistence on moral purposed of art
Celebrated value of “art for art's sake
Settled in London
Mocked Victorian notions about moral seriousness of great art
Treated art as the “supreme reality” and treated life as “fiction”
The Picture of Dorian Grey
The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) is the only novel by Oscar Wilde.
Dorian, whose portrait is painted by Basil Hallward, expresses a wish that he might remain young and handsome and that his portrait age instead. His wish is granted: the longer he pursues his life of debauched sensuality, the more foul his portrait becomes, while his appearance remains unchanged. In an attempt to shame Dorian into reform, Hallward persuades him to reveal the portrait, but Dorian kills Hallward when he sees the painter's horrified reaction.
Dorian finally tears the canvas with a dagger, but his servants later find the portrait as it originally looked and the body of their master, a diseased rake, lying dead on the floor.
Preface
The artist is the creator of beautiful things.
To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim.
The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things.
The highest as the lowest form of criticism is a mode of autobiography.
Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.
Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope.
They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only beauty.
There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.
His only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), is a melodramatic tale of moral decadence, distinguished for its brilliant, epigrammatic style.
Although the author fully describes the process of corruption, the shocking conclusion of the story commits him to a moral stand against self-debasement.
The critics still charged Wilde with immorality.
“The artist is the creator of beautiful things.
”All art is useless.”
Lord Henry - hedonist;
Basil's fascination with Dorian;
Dorian's relations with Sibyl Vane (commits suicide);
Dorian's complex personality;
In 1895, at the peak of his career, Wilde became the central figure in one of the most sensational court trials of the century. The results scandalized the Victorian middle class; Wilde, who had been a close friend of the young Lord Alfred Douglas, was accused by Douglas's father, the Marquess of Queensberry, of sodomy, an accusation that was upheld by the courts on Wilde's retrial in May 1895.
Sentenced to two years of hard labour in prison, he emerged financially bankrupt and spiritually downcast. He spent the rest of his life in Paris, using the pseudonym Sebastian Melmoth. He was converted to Roman Catholicism before he died of meningitis in Paris on November 30, 1900.
Wilde's `transgressive ethic'.
Wilde's view of art: art can have no ethical sympathies.
The Importance of Being Earnest
The Importance of Being Earnest (produced 1895) most famous comedy
Complicated plot turns upon fortunes and misfortunes of two young upper-class Englishmen:
John Worthing and Algernon Moncrieff
Each lives double life; creates another personality to escape tedious social/family obligations
Plot composed of events of the most improbable & trivial significance
Real substance of play witty dialogue
According to Wilde, trivial things should be treated seriously and serious things should be treated trivially.
-Title based on satirical double meaning: “Ernest” is the name of fictitious character, also designates sincere aspiration
Making the “earnestness” of his Ernest the key to outrageous comedy, Wilde pokes fun at conventional seriousness
Uses solemn moral language to frivolous and ridiculous action
The Importance of Being Earnest uses the following literary devices:
Paradox: seems contradictory but presents truth
Inverted logic: words/phrases turned upside down reversing our expectations
Pun: play on words using word or phrase that has two meanings
Low Comedy:
Subjects of the humour consists of dirty jokes, dirty gestures, sex, and elimination
The extremes of humour range from exaggeration to understatement with a focus on the physical like long noses, cross eyes, humped back and deformities.
The physical actions revolve around slapstick, pratfalls, loud noises, physical mishaps, collisions - all part of the humor of man encountering and uncooperative universe.
Wilde's aphorisms:
...my dear boy, no woman is a genius. They are a decorative sex. They never have anything to say, but they say it charmingly. Women represent the triumph of matter over mind, just as men represent the triumph of mind over morals.
A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can one want?
A woman begins by resisting a man's advances, and ends by blocking his retreat.
Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.
I was asked by the customs if I had anything to declare. I said: Yes, I'd like to declare -- I'm a genius
Life imitates art more than art imitates life.
Marriage is the triumph of imagination over intelligence. Second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience.
There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written.
Thirty-five is a very attractive age. London society is full of women of the very highest birth who have, of their own free choice, remained thirty-five for years.
We have really everything in common with America nowadays except, of course, language.
When I was young, I thought money was the most important thing in life. Now, when I'm old, I know it is.
Women love us for our defects. If we have enough of them, they will forgive us everything, even our intellects.
Be yourself, everyone else is already taken.