Oscar Wilde

1854-1900
OSCAR FINGAL O'FLAHERTIE WILLS WILDE

 Above is Oscar’s birth

name which was given
him by his mother.
 Born October 16, 1854 in
Dublin, Ireland
FAMILY BACKGROUND
 Lady Jane Francesca Wilde: poet and journalist who wrote patriotic Irish
national verse under the penname “Speranza”

 Sir William Wilde: leading eye and ear surgeon, gifted writer, philanthropist

 Brother named Willie and a sister named Isola who died at the age of 10

 Oscar Wilde was very devastated by the death of his sister

EDUCATION
 Wilde was educated at various institutions, including:
 Portora Royal School (1864-71)
 Trinity College, Dublin (1871-74)
 Magdalen College, Oxford (1874-78)

 While at Oxford, Wilde became interested in the aesthetic movement and became a
proponent of “Art for art’s sake.”
 1879: After graduation, Wilde moved to Chelsea in London to begin his
writing career.

 1881: published Poems which received mixed reviews from critics

 He worked as an art reviewer (1881), lectured in the United States and

Canada (1882), and lived in Paris (1883). He also lectured in Britain and
Ireland (1883 - 1884).
 1884: Married Constance Lloyd, daughter of a wealthy aristocrat. They had
two sons, Cyril and VyVyan

 To support the new family, Wilde took a job as editor of Woman’s World
magazine where he worked for two years.
 1888: published a book of fairytales for his sons

 1891: published his first and only novel, The Picture of Dorian
Gray, which received negative reviews due to its homoerotic
undertones which were quite sensational in Victorian England.
 1891: Wilde began having an affair with Lord Alfred Douglas,
nicknamed Bosie.

 This was to be both the love of his life and his downfall.
 Wilde gave up on the novel writing and began
writing plays:
 Lady Windemere’s Fan, opened in February 1892.
 The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)

 Both plays were received with great praise and

established Wilde as a worthy playwright.
SCANDAL
 In April 1895, Oscar sued Bosie's father for libel as the Marquis of
Queensberry had accused him of homosexuality. Oscar's case was
unsuccessful and he was himself arrested and tried for gross indecency.
He was sentenced to two years of hard labor for the crime of sodomy.
During his time in prison he wrote a dramatic monologue and
autobiography, which was addressed to Bosie.
 Upon his release in 1897, he wrote The Ballad of Reading Gaol,
revealing his concern for inhumane prison conditions. He spent
the rest of his life wandering Europe, staying with friends and
living in cheap hotels. He died of cerebral meningitis on
November 30, 1900, penniless, in a cheap Paris hotel.
STYLE GONE WILDE 
 Wildean Dandy:
 He is content with philosophic contemplation. He is afraid of the power
that an individual — any individual — is potentially capable of
exercising over him.
 He does not involve himself in the worries of his friends, for worry
signals suffering, and the Wildean dandy will do everything possible to
avoid suffering.
 He blocks off any realization that might pain him.
 He is afraid of his own unacknowledged desires. He is afraid to live the
kind of life that so fascinates him.
 His wit is just one of his means of defense. It is a way of evading the
obligation to respond to the demands and individuality of another person.
 Wilde is also known for his witty phrases, ironic
situations, and use of paradox.
A NOTE ABOUT AESTHETICISM
 1870-1900
 Began in Britain as a result of Japonisme – an art movement that
refuted the Classical Greek treatment of art.
 Art was often asymmetrical and treated lines, shapes, etc in
various new ways.

 Many subjects of the new aestheticism were from the natural

world – birds, flowers, etc.
 The artists and writers of the Aesthetic movement tended to hold that
the Arts should provide refined sensuous pleasure, rather than convey
moral or sentimental messages.
 As a consequence, they did not accept John Ruskin and Matthew
Arnold's utilitarian conception of art as something moral or useful.
 Instead, they believed that Art did not have any didactic purpose; it
need only be beautiful.
 The Aesthetes developed the cult of beauty, which they considered the
basic factor in art.
 Life should copy Art, they asserted.
 They considered nature as crude and lacking in design when compared
to art.