Oscar wilde

OSCAR WILDE

He deepened psychological analysis but refused the convention of the omniscient narrator. Most of his stories are told from the point of view of one character speaking in the first person.

The line of development of the Aesthetic Movement can be traced back to the Renaissance poet Spenser and the romantic poet Keats, with his cult of beauty and the awareness of the contrast art-life. Ruskin protested against the indifference of the materialistic Victorian Society to art and the beautiful. Ruskin supported the Pre-Raphaelism, a group of artists who rejected academic art in favour of the spontaneity and spirituality of Italian painters before Raphael. Swimburne was influenced by the Pre-Raphaelites and by French writers.

Oscar Wilde was born in Dublin in 1854. The family belonged to the wealthy Protestant minority. He soon began to adopt extravagant poses: he dressed exotically and wore his hair long. He settled in London and soon became the leading personality of English decadentism. He went to the USA and married Constance Lloyd, and they had two children. Wilde wrote The Picture of Dorian Grey, a novel which contains his aesthetic creed. Dorian Grey is an upper young man of extraordinary beauty. A painter is so impressed by his looks that he decides to paint a full-lenght portrait of him. But Dorian is not just wonderfully handsome. Wilde wrote also Lady Windermere's Fan, A Woman of No Importance, An Ideal Husband and The Importance of Being Ernest. Salomè was written in French because it was a language more suited to decadence. He became friend with Lord Alfred Douglas, but this relationship was fatal to him. He was accused of homosexual and he imprisoned with hard labour. When he was released from prison he had become poor and unknown. His wife refused to join him but sent him money to help him survive. Two works were the result of the experience of prison: De Profundis, a confession in form of letter to Lord Alfred Douglas, and The Ballad of Reading Goal, a poem. Wilde dead in Paris in 1900. One of the adjectives which best suits the personality of Wilde is eclectic. His output covered all the literary forms, from verse to narrative, from essay to drama. Each of his works is full of originality, of wit, brilliant in expression. Wilde was the embodiment of Aestheticism. He had an extravagant style of living. The Aesthetes were fascinated by the contrast art-life, asserting the superiority of art. there was the triumph of art over life. Oscar wilde was more popular abroad than in his own country.