Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

1. Life

•He，born in Dublin in1854, studied classics at Trinity College（三圣学院），and then went to Oxford University, where he distinguished himself as a classical scholar and poet.

•Oscar Wilde adopted the aesthetical ideal: he affirmed “my life is like a work of art”.

•His aestheticism clashed with the didacticism启蒙主义of Victorian novels.

Aestheticism

•Aestheticism is a Victorian literary movement that was begun in the late 19th century.

•The movement had its roots in France, but it gained widespread importance in England in the last half of the nineteenth century, where it helped change the Victorian practice of including moral lessons in literature.

•Oscar Wilde is one of the best-known "aesthetes" of the late nineteenth century.

Aestheticism

•The novel The Picture of Dorian Gray succinctly sets forth the tenets of Wilde’s philosophy of art.

•Devoted to a school of thought and a mode of sensibility known as aestheticism, Wilde believed that art possesses an intrinsic value—that it is beautiful and therefore has worth and does not need to serve any other purpose, be it moral or political.

•The purpose of art was to guide life, and to do this it must concern itself only with the pursuit of beauty.

Aestheticism

•This attitude was revolutionary in Victorian England, where popular belief held that art was not only a function of morality but also a means of enforcing it.

•In the preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray, Wilde also cautioned readers against finding meanings ―beneath the surface‖ o f art.

–―All art is quite useless.‖

•―Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex, and vital.‖

•Wilde believed that the artist should hold forth higher ideals, and that pleasure and beauty would replace utilitarian ethics.

•Importance of individualism

– "There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written."

– "A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is

absolutely fatal."

– "But beauty, real beauty, ends where an intellectual expression

begins. Intellect is in itself a mode of exaggeration, and destroys the harmony of any face."

•1890 → first appeared in a magazine.

•1891 → revised and extended.

•It reflects Oscar Wilde’s personality.

•It was considered immoral by the Victorian public.

The Picture

of Dorian Gray

(1890)

Directed by

Albert Lewin

(1945)

• A temptation is placed before Dorian: a potential ageless beauty.

•Lord Henry’s cynical见利忘义attitude is in keeping with the devil’s role in Dr Faust.•Lord Henry acts as the “Devil advocate”.

•The picture stands for the dark side of Dorian’s personality.

•Every excess越轨行为must be punished and reality cannot be escaped.