Oscar Wilde is arguably one of the most intriguing and thought-provoking poets, writers, and playwrights of the Victorian Era. Oscar Wilde was born an exquisite and brilliantly creative person, who wrote some of the most well known plays and poems of the Victorian Era. Most of Wilde’s critically acclaimed works have been centered on certain pivotal principles he credited in his artistic ways, and in his personal life. The most important of these central views is, “the critical and cultured spirits…will seek to gain their impressions almost entirely from what Art has touched. For Life is terribly deficient in form” (Ericksen 8). This statement is attributing to the core values of some of Oscar Wilde’s most famous works. It is understood that …show more content…
His name at birth was Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde. Wilde’s father was a very successful surgeon, and many notable people, including royalty, use his services. Wilde’s mother was Jane Francesca Elgee, and she was the “daughter of a solicitor from Wexford” (Ericksen 14). Wilde expanded upon and took inspiration from one of Wilde’s mother’s ancestor’s Gothic Novel called Melmoth the Wanderer (1820). This gothic novel later inspired his story The Picture of Dorian Gray. William Robert Wills Wilde and Jane Francesca Elgee had three children, with Oscar being the middle child. However, Wilde’s younger sister died and Oscar was heartbroken. When Oscar was a tender ten years old he attended the Portora Royal School, Enniskillen. Wilde had a way with conversations, and even at a young age he was a true raconteur. He was able to earn a scholarship while at school to Trinity College, Dublin. While at Trinity College, Oscar Wilde excelled in studying the classics, and proceeded to win prestigious academic awards, such as the Berkeley Gold Medal for Greek. On October 17th, 1874, Oscar Wilde began attending Magdalen College. It was at Magdalen College where Wilde met two influential men, who changed his ways of thinking. One of the two men Oscar associated with while at Magdalen College further perpetuated Wilde’s notion to ponder questions about life and society, and caused him to
In ‘Wilde’s Fiction’ written by Jerusha McCormack, the author starts her essay examining Oscar Wilde’s life and origins. The Artist, born and schooled in Ireland became a writer in England where he lived as a queer kind of Irishman. He studied in Oxford where he challenged himself beating the great scholars he met; later on, he acquired the title of an English aristocrat and made himself over as a dandy, a fine well-dressed man, who can also be known as a quite self-concerned person. Oscar Wilde, was also particularly famous for his quips, examining the drafts of his plays in fact, he used to open his works with jokes and witty phrases, his aphorisms became popular very soon and this could happen especially because he used the language of his audience, the language of common double-talk.
Oscar Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Earnest” epitomizes the idiosyncrasy of the Victorian society through satire and wit. Throughout the play Wilde criticizes the common perception of the mid seventeenth through early eighteenth century culture, “Prudish, hypocritical, stuffy and narrow minded”. With his quintessential characters and intricate situations Wilde configures the perfect depiction of the carless irrationality of social life, the frivolity of the wealthy, the importance of money, and the lack of reverence for marriage often manifested by those in this era. Wilde also jabs at the Victorian convention to uphold the appearance of decency in order to hide the cruel, indignant and manipulative attitudes of the time. Through setting, characters, comedy, and a great deal of drama Oscar Wilde portrays his views on the elitist of his time.
Both texts grasp the attention of their audiences, however, Wilde’s manages to do so brilliantly.
Wilde, Oscar. The Picture of Dorian Gray; For Love of the King. London: Routledge/Thoemmes Press, 1993.
The wit of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest stems from his place in society and his views of it. He mocks the Victorian aristocracy through his statements and satirising of marriage dependent on social class and wealth, the careful implantation of comedic techniques which add to the effect of the message Wilde aims for the society to take into consideration and the ignorance portrayed by the Victorian society. These socially acceptable mockeries allow the audience to laugh at the satirical social statements while learning a didactic lesson about the current society issues. Through Wilde’s satirical wit, he completes the educational tales he was aiming for, emphasising to readers the insaneness that society can be and its rules.
Baselga, Mariano. “Oscar Wilde: The Satire of Social Habits.” In Rediscovering Oscar Wilde, England: Colin Smuthe, 1994: pp. 13-20.
3. Arno, The. "Oscar Wilde - Biography and Works. Search Texts, Read Online. Discuss.." The Literature Network: Online classic literature, poems, and quotes. Essays & Summaries. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 May 2012. .
Wilde, Oscar. The Picture of Dorian Gray. Michael Patrick Gillespie, Editor. Norton Critical Edition. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2007.
McGlinn, Colin. A. Ethics, Evil and Fiction. New York: Oxford University Press, Inc., 1997. Pearson, Hesketh. A. Oscar Wilde: His Life and Wit.
Oscar Wilde was born in October 16, 1854, in the mid era of the Victorian period—which was when Queen Victoria ruled. Queen Victoria reigned from 1837 to 1901.While she ruined Britain, the nation rise than never before, and no one thought that she was capable of doing that. “The Victorian era was both good and bad due to the rise and fall of the empires and many pointless wars were fought. During that time, culture and technology improved greatly” (Anne Shepherd, “Overview of the Victorian Era”). During this time period of English, England was facing countless major changes, in the way people lived and thought during this era. Today, Victorian society is mostly known as practicing strict religious or moral behavior, authoritarian, preoccupied with the way they look and being respectable. They were extremely harsh in discipline and order at all times. Determination became a usual Victorian quality, and was part of Victorian lifestyle such as religion, literature and human behavior. However, Victorian has its perks, for example they were biased, contradictory, pretense, they cared a lot of about what economic or social rank a person is, and people were not allowed to express their sexuality. Oscar Wilde was seen as an icon of the Victorian age. In his plays and writings, he uses wit, intelligence and humor. Because of his sexuality he suffered substantially the humiliation and embarrassment of imprisonment. He was married and had an affair with a man, which back then was an act of vulgarity and grossness. But, that was not what Oscar Wilde was only known for; he is remembered for criticizing the social life of the Victorian era, his wit and his amazing skills of writing. Oscar Wilde poem “The Ballad of Reading Gaol” typifies the Vi...
Wilde, Oscar. The Picture of Dorian Gray. Michael Patrick Gillespie, Editor. Norton Critical Edition. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2007.
Wilde, Oscar. The Picture of Dorian Gray. New York: Barnes & Nobles Classics, 2003. Print.
Oscar Wilde’s ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’ is a beautifully constructed depiction of nineteenth century Victorian life. The quirky and often irreverent situations presented were often witty and amusing but in many instances revealed a biting critique of traditional expectations and behaviour. Wilde arguably would have used the play to showcase his literary prowess and it is to what extent that Wilde used the play as a platform or used the play to expose hypocritical values that would be questioned by both contemporary and modern audiences.
...argues that lying is a requisite of art, for without it there is nothing but a base realism. The ordeal in which the novel in England, Wilde claims, is that writers do not lie enough; they do not have enough imagination in their works: "they find life crude, and leave it raw." In this particular essay Wilde makes his apparently outrageous statement that "life imitates Art far more than Art imitates life." Though perhaps and obviously overstating the fact, Wilde convincingly discusses the many ways in which our perceptions of reality are affected by the art that we have experienced, an idea adapted from poet and critic Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the other earlier English romantics. But in all he feels poetry can be expressed easier and much more widespread than art it self, art can only be art and be seen as it is but poetry can be expressed in many other ways.
Woodcock, George. The Paradox of Oscar Wilde. London-New York: T.V. Boardman and Co., Ltd., 1950.