Oscar Wilde
A conceptual map of Luigi Galvano
LIFE
Born in Dublin in 1854
He became a disciple of Walter
Pater, the theorist of aestheticism
He became a fashionable dandy
He was one of the most successful playwrights of late Victorian London and one of the greatest celebrities of his days
He suffered a dramatic downfall and was imprisoned after been convicted of “gross indecency” for homosexual acts.
He died in Paris in 1900
WORKS
Poetry
Fairy tales
Poems, 1891
The Ballad of Reading Gaol, 1898
The Happy Prince and other Tales, 1888
The House of Pomegranates, 1891
Novel
The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1891
Plays
Lady Windermere’s Fan, 1892
A Woman of no Importance, 1893
The Importance of Being Earnest, 1895
Salomé, 1893
WILDE’S AESTHETICISM
Oscar Wilde adopted the aesthetical ideal: he affirmed “my life is like a work of art”
His aestheticism clashed with the didacticism of Victorian novels
The artist = The creator of beautiful things
Art is used only to celebrate beauty
Virtue and vice are employed by the artist as raw material in his art: “No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style”