Please enable JavaScript.

Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.

Oscar Wilde, Art is neither moral or immoral, but beauty in itself is a…

- - - - He then became a leading figure of the Aesthetic Movement
      - He married an english woman in 1884 and worked for one of her magazines
        
        (1888) The Happy Prince and Other Tales
        
        (1890) The Picture of Dorian Gray
        
        (1895) The Importance of being Ernest
        
        He became involved in a legal case that led to his ruin
        
        He had an affair with Lord Alfred Douglas. His father accused him of homosexuality
        
        Wilde was put in trial with the accusation of "Gross indecency". He was sentenced to two-year imprisonment and hard labour
        
        When he got out he was phiysically and psychologically destroyed. He lived in exile in France and wrote very little.
- - - - Jack and Algernon are wealthy gentlemen. Jack lives a respectable life in the country. Algernon lives in luxury in London and has invented an imaginary invalid friend whom he visits in the country. Jack has also invented a character, a younger brother called Ernest whom he uses as pretext for going up to London.
        Jack wants to marry Algernon’s cousin Gwendolen, but must first convince her mother, Lady Bracknell, of the respectability of his parents. For Jack, having been abandoned in a handbag at Victoria station, this is quite a difficult task.
        Algernon visits Jack’s house in the country and introduces himself to Cecily as Ernest, knowing that Cecily is already fascinated by tales of Ernest's wickedness. He further wins her over and they become engaged. Shortly after, Jack arrives home announcing Ernest’s death. Eventually, Jack discovers that his parents were Lady Bracknell’s sister and brother-in-law and that he is, in fact, Algernon’s older brother, called Ernest. The two sets of lovers are thus free to marry
    - - This novel is a satire to the hypocricy of contemporary society. It attacks the moralism of a world which, sadly, would prove to be the cause of Wilde's tragic end
    - - This novel can be described as a novel of manners, a genre that has flourished in France with Moliere. The title itself is a pun between the adjective "earnest" and the name Ernest
  - - - Dorian Gray is a rich, beautiful young man that has his portrait painted by Basil Hallward. He decides to sacrifice his soul to mantain his beauty. He will remain young, while the portrait will show the signs of time. He leads an edonistic life that takes him to kill Basil, that discovered his secret. After this episode he stabs the picture, that reobtains his natural beauty, while he becomes an old man.
    - - This novel represents the social divide of Victorian England
      - The "double life" of Dorian is a sign of hipocricy
        
        He uses beauty to be accepted in society, but he does not pay for the consequences of his actions
    - - The story is told in a 3rd-person narrator and combines the elements of gothic novels with the French decadent fiction