英国文学 Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde : Life / writing
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As one of the greatest Playwrights of the Victorian Era: Lady Windermere’s Fan (1892) A Woman of No Importance (1893) Salome (1893) An Ideal Husband (1895) The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)
The Aesthetic Movement: Aestheticism



Aestheticism places art above life, and holds that life should imitate art, not art imitate life. This was a reaction against the Victorian convention of art for morality’s sake, or art for money’s sake. The main characteristics of the movement were: suggestion rather than statement, sensuality, massive use of symbols, synaesthetic effects, that is correspondence between words, colours and music.
Summary


In this act, Jack comes to Algernon’s house. Their humorous talking explains the background of this story. By the cigarette case, Jack has to tell Algernon his true name and even his family background, also explain why his name is Ernest in town and Jack in the country. In the meantime, Algernon pulls out his secret about Bunburyist too. What’s more, Jack has fallen in love with Algernon’s first cousin Gwendolen and even wants to propose to her.
Oscar Wilde : point of view

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4. “Art for art’s sake” is the best-known aspect of Wilde’s life and writings. He argued that human beings should cultivate their aesthetic sensibilities, their appreciation of beautiful artistry. Life, he was saying, should consist of more than adherence to dull and restrictive notions of what was useful or moral. It should aspire to the freedom of art and the variety of experience it contains.
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Literature of 90’s
• In the late Victorian Age , there was an overall change of attitude in literature. The writers of the 1890’s are sometimes styled "Late Victorians" and sometimes "the first of the moderns". • The most important literary movement in this final decade, is the Aestheticism, represented by Oscar Wilde
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The Aesthetic Movement:



It is a loosely defined movement in art and in literature in later 19th century Britain. the Aestheticism had its forerunners in John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley. Aesthetic writers used the slogan, “art for art’s sake” and asserted that there was no connection between art and morality. They believed that Art does not have any didactic purpose, it need only be beautiful. Arts should provide refined sensuous pleasure, rather than convey moral or sentimental message. Only when art is for art's sake, can it be immortal.
Oscar Wilde : point of view

2. His social outloook emerged from an interplay of influences: his Irish family background, his mother’s views and, above all, his epoch. In an ugly age, Wilde believed that art should not imitate life but art. He wrote, “To project one’s soul into some gracious form” is “perhaps the most satisfying joy left to us in an age so limited and vulgar as our own, an age grossly carnal in its pleasures, and grossly common in its aims.”
Oscar Wilde : point of view

3. He believed that art had nothing to do with morality, but should exist for its own sake. Artists, Wilde believed, should be left to pursue their art, without the involvement of the state. Private property should be abolished, since ownership hindered the development and spirit of art. Wilde’s took him towards propagandizing for “art for art’s sake”.
Oscar Wilde : Life / writing
(17 years of success in Britain and in America ) A Critic of literature and of society: The Decay of Lying (1889) The Soul of Man Under Socialism (1891) A Novelist: The Portrait of Dorian Gray (1891)
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900): Irish dramatist and poet
The British author Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) was part of the "art for art's sake" movement in English literature at the end of the 19th century. He is best known for his brilliant, witty comedies.
Oscar Wilde : point of view

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1. He dared to challenge the English social ideals. In his deeply humane and subversive essay, The Soul of Man Under Socialism, Wilde, in fact, heaped scorn on piecemeal approaches to the social ills produced by capitalism. Of the reforms he said, “their remedies do not cure the disease: they merely prolong it. The proper aim is to try and reconstruct society on such a basis that poverty will be impossible.”
Oscar Wilde : Life / writing




Born and grew up in Dublin Educated in Dublin’s Trinity College and Oxford. After his graduation in 1878, he settled in London where he established himself both as a writer and as a spokesman for the school of “ Art for Art’s Sake”. 1895 he was arrested and sentenced to jail for homosexuality. After 2 years of imprisonment, he emigrated to France and led a gloomy life there. Died in 1900 and buried in Paris.
His writing features:

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He demonstrated a breaking away from the conventional well-made plays of the 1870s and 1880s. he expressed a satirical and bitter attitude towards the upper-class people by revealing their corruption, their snobbery, and their hypocrisy in his plays. In brilliance of verbal wit, wilde is close akin to George Bernard Shaw.
Act 1
The Importance of Being Earnest
Relationship
Lady Bracknell
Cecily
Guardian
mother
Gwendolen
LOVE
cousin
Jack/Ernest
brother
Algernon/Ernest
mother
Lady Bracknell’ sister