Oscar Wilde Biographie Essay Research Paper Wilde

Oscar Wilde Biographie Essay, Research Paper

Wilde, Oscar (Fingal O’Flahertie Wills)

b. , Oct. 16, 1854, Dublin, Ire.

d. Nov. 30, 1900, Paris, Fr.

Irish wit, poet, and dramatist whose reputation grounds on his comic

masterpieces Lady Windermere’s Fan (1892) and The Importance of Being

Earnest (1895). He was a spokesman for the late 19th-century Aesthetic

movement in England, which advocated art for art’s sake; and he had to suffer from

celebrated civil and criminal suits which involving his homosexuality and caused his

ending in imprisonment (1895-97).

Wilde was born of professional and literary parents. Wilde was the second son of Sir William

Wilde,who was Ireland’s leading ear and eye surgeon(Augenchirurg), who also published

books on archaeology, folklore, and the satirist Jonathan Swift; his mother( Lady Jane Francesca Wilde)can be described as an ambitious and revolutionary poet and an authority on Celtic myth and folklore.She was a prominent figure in Dublin literary society.

He had a brother, his name was William, who was one year older than Oscar and a sister, who was

three years younger and she died, when she was 10 years old after a bad illness. The

family was quite well-off.

Wilde attended the Portora Royal School,Enniskillen(1864-/71)and his favourite subjects were poetry and the classics.

Wilde excelled as a student of classical literature. His successive scholarships at Trinity College, Dublin (1871-74), and Magdalen College, Oxford (1874-78) induced them to award him with a degree with honours.By means of his long poem, Ravenna, he won the coveted(heftig begehrt)Newdigate Prize in 1878.This implied a huge progress for him because he became well-known, not only as a classical scholar, a poseur and a wit but also as a poet.

Since 1879,after his studies in Dublin and Oxford, he settled in London.There he soon became famous for his brilliant conversation and his flamboyant manner of dress and behaviour.At a time when most Victorian men wore sober wool suits and stiff white shirts Wilde often appeared in extravagant dress with velvet coat edged with braid, kneebreeches, silk stockings , a soft loose shirt with a wide collar, and a large, flowing ,richly colored tie.

Wilde was deeply impressed by the teachings

of the English writers John Ruskin and Walter Pater on the central importance of art in life. Walter Pater was an English critic, essayist, and humanist whose advocacy of “art for art’s sake” became a cardinal

doctrine of the movement known as Aestheticism.This writer began what is usually known as the “aesthetic movement” by replacing the older Victorian insistence on the moral purpose of art by celebrating the value of Art for Art’s sake.

Especially Walter Pater’s stress on the aesthetic intensity by which life should be lived exerted special influence on Oskar. Like

many in his generation, Wilde was determined to follow Pater’s urging “to burn always with [a]

hard, gemlike flame.” But Wilde also delighted in affecting an aesthetic pose; this, combined

with rooms at Oxford decorated with objets d’art, resulted in his famous remark: “Oh, would

that I could live up to my blue china!”

In the early 1880s, when Aestheticism was the rage and despair of literary London, Wilde

established himself in social and artistic circles by his wit and flamboyance. Soon the periodical

Punch made him the satiric object of its antagonism to the Aesthetes for what was considered their unmasculine devotion to art; and in their comic opera Patience, Gilbert and Sullivan based

the character Bunthorne, a “fleshly poet,” partly on Wilde. Wishing to reinforce the association,

Wilde published, at his own expense, Poems (1881), which echoed, too faithfully, his

discipleship(J ngerschaft,Anh ngerschaft) to the poets Algernon Swinburne, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and John Keats.

Eager for further acclaim, Wilde agreed to lecture(Vortrag,Vorlesung) in the United States and Canada in 1882, announcing on his arrival in New York City that he had “nothing to declare but his genius.” Despite widespread hostility in the press to his languid(tr ge,schlaff,ersch pft) poses(Position, Haltung)and aesthetic costume of velvet jacket, knee breeches, and black silk stockings, Wilde for 12 months exhorted the Americans to love beauty and art; then he returned to Great Britain to lecture on his impressions of America.

In 1884 Wilde married Constance Lloyd,the daughter of a prominent Irish barrister; two children,

Cyril and Vyvyan, were born, in 1885 and 1886. Also in 1886 he met Robert Ross, a 17 year old man, who became Oscar+s lover, but also a good friend.

Meanwhile, Wilde was a reviewer for the Pall Mall Gazette and then became editor of Woman’s World (1887-89). During this period of apprenticeship as a writer, he published” The Happy Prince and Other Tales” (1888), which reveals his gift for romantic allegory(Sinnbild,Gleichnis) in the form of the fairy tale.

In the final decade of his life, Wilde wrote and published nearly all of his major work. In his

only novel, “The Picture of Dorian Gray” (published in Lippincott’s Magazine, 1890, and in book