OSCAR WILDE (1854 - 1900)
Was
born in Dublin in 1845. He was influenced by aestheticism and even more by
decadentism. From aestheticism he took the cult of beauty, which must be
associated with art. In particular the concept take 'Art for Art's
Sake', taken from Pater, led him to believe that only 'Art as the
cult of Beauty' could prevent the murder of the soul. Role of the artist: Wilde perceived the artist as an alien
in a materialistic world. He wrote only to please himself and not to
communicate his theories to his fellow beings, in fact he doesn't believe, on
the contrary of the writers of the Enlightenment, in a didactic and moral aim
for art. His pursuit of beauty is the tragic act of a superior being, inevitably
turned into an outcast. The Wildean man-ideal is the dandy, which is an
aristocratic whose elegance is a symble of the superiotity of his spirit and he
is an individualist, who demands absolute freedom. Dorian Gray, the protagonist of the novel The Picture of
Dorian Gray is the typical dandy, in fact he thinks that life should be lived
in his full and he belives in beauty, elegance and youth, which is synonimous
with beauty and happiness. Plot:
Dorian Gray is a young man whose beauty fascinates a painter, Basil Hallward,
who decides to portray him. While Gray's desires are satisfied, including that
of the eternal youth, the signs of age, experience and vice appear on the
portrait. When the painter sees the corrupted image of the portrait, Dorian kills
him. Later Dorian wants to free himself of the portrait, witness to his
spiritual corruption, and stabs it, but he mysteriousely kills himself. In the
moment of the death the picture returns to its original purity and Dorian's
face becomes 'withered, wrinkled and loathsome'. Allegory meaning: this story is profoundly allegorical and it is a
19th century version of the myth of th Faust, the story of a man who
sells his soul to the devil so that all his desires might be satisfied. In this
novel the soul becomes the picture, which records the signs of experience,
corruption, horror, concealed under the mask of Dorian timeless beauty. The
picture stands for the dark side of Dorian's personality, which he tries to
forget by locking the picture in a room. The orrible, corrupting picture could
be seen as a symbol of the immorality and bad coscience of the Victorian middle
classes, while Dorian's purity and innocence are symbols of the bourgeois
hypocrisy. Finally the picture, restored to his original beauty, illustrates
Wilde's theories of art: art survives people, art is eternal. The moral of this novel is that every
excess must be punished and reality cannot be escaped, in fact when Dorian
destroys the picture, he cannot avoid the punishment for all his sins, that is
death. The play The importance of
Being Earnest is a satire on the hypocritical society of that time. Its
plot is based on a lie and the story
continues through a series of misunderstandings based on Jack pretending to be
Earnest. When Jack was a child, he was found in a black leather handbag in the
cloak- room at Victorian Station by Mr. Worthing, an old gentleman who adopted
him and gave him his own name. Now Jack lives in the country, but he often go
to London on the pretext of visiting a fictious brother, Ernest. While in
London, he falls in love with Gwendolen, whose mother, Lady Bracknell, opposes
to their marriage for Jack's unknown origins. Instead Algernon, Jack's friend,
lives in London, but he often go to the country on the pretext of visiting a
fictious friend and there he falls in love with Cecily. Interpretations : this play is a satire of Victorian
society, starting from the lack of earnestess of the protagonist and investing
all the pillars of the Victorian society, that are marriage, church, respectability and the role of sexes.
Irony: the comical effect and the
irony are obtained by the use of paradox and wit.
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