Oscar wilde - biography and works PDF

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OSCAR WILDE Life:  o o 

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1854 – was born and grew up in Dublin in a Anglo-Irish family. His father was a doctor – eye specialist he thought it was important that the poor should have access to medical attention, he funded and opened a free eye and ear hospital his mother a translator and poet with the pseudonym 1874 – He graduated from Trinity college and then went to Magdalene College (Oxford) where he became familiar with Aesthetic of Walter Pater and John Ruskin. He settled in London and became a spokesman for the Art for Art’s Sake .  he was a DANDY and he was victim of witticism ( clever humorous observations) and aphorism gave a lecture tour in America, he spent there several months in Paris where he met Verlaine, Hugo, Zola and Balzac 1884 he married Constance Lloyd and had 2 children 1895 he was arrested and imprisoned in Reading Goal for homosexual offences 1897 – after his release from prison he moved to France where he lived in poverty and obscurity under an assumed name 1900 he died and was buried in Paris

DANDY – aesthete = a man that cares mostly about his physical appearance, refined language. ART FOR ART’S SAKE - this slogan is associated with don Walter Pater and his followers in the Aesthetic movement= in rebellion against the Victorian moralism. It first appeared in two works published simultaneously in 1868:  Pater’s review of William Morris’s poetry in the Westminster Review  William Blake by Algernon Charles Swinburne. A modified form of Pater’s review of William Morris’s poetry appears in his studies of the Renaissance – one of the most influential texts of the Aesthetic movement = Pater declared that life had to be lived intensely, following an ideal of beauty.  the artists believed that there was no connection between art and morality and tended to hold that the arts should provide refined pleasure rather than convey moral messages. Art should not be useful but develop the ult of beauty The main characteristics were o sexuality o extents use of symbols o synesthetic effects (correspondence between colors, music and words) This slogan played a significant role in OSCAR WILDE – THE PICTURE OF DORAIN GRAY. HOMOSEXUALITY – 1819 - Oscar Wilde met Lord Alfred Douglas (aka BOSIE)  they began a relationship that lasted over 4 years. Boise’s father was the Marquis of Queensbury who took offence at his son’s relationship and called Oscar Wilde a somdomnite meaning sodomnite 1885 – Oscar Wilde sued the Marquis for libel as he had accused him of homosexuality. Wilde later withdrew the charge. Based on the evidence presented to the court he was charged with gross indecency and found guilty. Wilde was sentenced to two years hard labor OSCAR WILDE’S WORK  the picture of Oscar Wilde  Salomé  The ballad of reading Gaol  An ideal husband  A woman of no importance

The picture of Dorian Gray

THE PREFACE – is considered a manifesto of the aesthetic movement, it expresses Wilde’s ideas on art. Some principles 1. the artist is creator of beautiful things 2. art’s aim is to reveal and conceal the artist 3. the critic can translate his impression of beautiful things into another matter or a new material 4. Books are either well or bad written 5. the artist can express anything 6. vice and virtue are materials for art 7. the spectator is art’s real mirror 8. diversity of opinion shows that the work is new, complex and vital THE STORY – Basil Hallward is an artist, fascinated by the youth and beauty of a young man called Dorian Gray. Therefore he decided to make a portrait of him. When it’s finished he shows it to Dorian who sees his beauty, something that he had never been conscious of before. He understands that the beauty in the picture will remain forever while he will grow old and horrible. Under the influence of Basil’s friend – Lord Henry Wotton (the amoral aesthete) who believes youth to be the supreme value – Dorian expresses a wish that the reverse were true, he also says that he will kill himself when his youth fades. Worried about Dorian’s reaction in front of the painting, Hallaward decides to destroy it but Dorian stops him and takes the picture home with him. Dorian and Lord Henry become friend. Dorian begins to frequent the theatre, where he meets a brilliant actress called Sybil Vane, who falls in love with him. Dorian rejects her when she decides to give up acting because of him. He then notices that this expression of cruelty has appeared on the portrait. He decides to go to Sybil but it’s late because she had already killed herself. Encouraged by Lord Henry, Dorian embarks on a life of vice and sensual gratification, letting the portrait assume the consequences of his corrupt and corrupting soul. Years later, Dorian, now totally corrupt and evil but still youthful as ever lets Basil Hallward see the now horrendous face of the portrait and then kills him to prevent him from revealing his secret. In order to maintain Dorian’s secret many other people have to die. The portrait become more and more ugly and he realizes the horrors of his sinful soul. Dorian decides to destroy the portrait but in doing so, he kills himself. The portrait restores to its original image of Dorian’s youthful perfection, while the real Dorian’s features in death become those of a terrible, disgusting old man

ANALYSIS – the work opens with a playful dialogue on the nature of art in the modern age. For Basil Hallward and Lord Henry Wotton, beauty and appearance have become the ultimate values. Only can only be judged on a aesthetic bases, not a moral one, reflecting the motto of aestheticism “ART FOR ART’S SAKE”. This dialogue forms the prologue of the story itself which moves from a typical comedy to a gothic horror – when Dorian makes a Faustian pact with an absent devil : his own life becomes an unchanging and untouchable work of art, while his portrait becomes the reflection of his real inner soul. The split between appearance and reality forms the central core of the novel = to seduce Dorian into this inverted world, Lord Henry gives him a copy of an unnamed yellow books, possibly Huysmans’s À rebours (Against nature)a key text for the Aesthetic movement  its central character Des Essenites, bored with reality, surrounds himself with an exotic world of precious objects, rituals, strange sounds and perfumes Lord Henry’s book could also be a reference the Yellow book – notorious British journal of the time. Dorian’s own tastes and ideas are heavily influenced by this book but go beyond a love of simple exoticism and pleasure – loving sensuality to embrace evil desires and passions, including murder and human sacrifice. Dorian considers his fascination with evil as part of a larger project to spiritualize the senses. He embodies many aspects of Wilde’s own philosophy, in particular his rejection of the utilitarian values of industrialized mass society through the cult of art and beauty for its own sake = Wilde has much closer to the ideas of French symbolism poet such as Baudelaire, Verlaine and Mallarme than he was to his Victorians contemporaries English literature. TRUTH AND BEAUTY – This novel could be seen as an extended meditation on the final words of John Keats’s ODE ON A GRECIAN URN : “Beauty is truth, truth beauty. That is all ye know on earth and all ye need to know  For Wilde a work of art is neither simply true nor false. Its superior values resides in the way it acknowledges and incorporates what is false or deceptive as a part of the truth. Wilde was fascinated by the art of the pre-Raphaelites for the way its visible beauty suggested spiritual purity and unspeakable pleasures. Beauty is a thing that cannot be questioned and in it the customary oppositions of good and evil/true and false/ moral and immoral don’t exist. When at the end the novel the picture is restored we ask ourselves whether it is in fact the same picture of youthful innocence of the beginning but we will never know the answer because a work of art is a mystery...