Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

I. Introduction to Wilde

Oscar Wilde was born on October 16, 1854 in

Dublin to unconventional parents - his mother Lady

Jane Francesca Wilde (1820-96), was a poet and

journalist. His father was Sir William Wilde also a

gifted writer, and specialist in diseases of the eye and

ear.

Oscar attended the Portoral Royal School, where

Oscar excelled at studying the classics, taking top prize

his last two years, and also earning a second prize in

drawing. In 1871, Oscar was awarded the Royal School

Scholarship to attend Trinity College in Dublin. Again,

he did particularly well in his classics courses, earning

the highest honor the college could bestow on an undergraduate, a Foundation Scholarship.

Oscar’s father died on April 19, 1876, leav ing the family financially strapped. Henry, William’s eldest son, paid the mortgage on the family’s house and supported them until his sudden death in 1877. Meanwhile, Oscar continued to do well at Oxford. After graduation, Oscar moved on London to live with his friend Frank Miles, a popular high society portrait painter.

In December 1881, Oscar sailed for New York to travel across the United States and deliver a series of lectures on aesthetics. The 50-lecture tour was originally scheduled to last four months, but stretched to nearly a year, with over 140 lectures given in 260 days. In between lectures he made time to meet with Henry Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes and Walt Whitman.

On May 29, 1884, Oscar married Constance Lloyd. Constance was four years younger than Oscar and the daughter of a prominent barrister(有资格出席高级法庭的律师)who died when she was 16. She was well-read, spoke several European languages and had an outspoken, independent mind. His first and only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, was published in an American magazine in 1890 to a storm of critical protest. He expanded the story and had it published in book form the following year. Its implied homoerotic(concerning of homosexual love or sex) theme was considered very immoral by the Victorians and played a considerable part in his later legal trials. Oscar’s first play, Lady Windermere’s Fan, opened in February 1892. Its financial and critical success prompted him to continue to write for the theater. His subsequent plays included A Woman of No Importance (1893), An Ideal Husband (1895), and The Importance of Being Earnest (1895). These plays were all highly acclaimed and firmly established Oscar as a playwright.

In the summer of 1891, Oscar met Lord Alfred ‘Bosie’ Douglas, the third s on of the Marquis of Queensberry. Bosie was well acquainted with Oscar’s novel Dorian Gray and was an undergraduate at Oxford. They soon became lovers and were

inseparable until Wilde’s arrest four years later. In April 1895, Oscar sued Bosie’s father for libel as the Marquis has accused him of homosexuality. Oscar withdrew his case but was himself arrested and convicted of gross indecency and sentenced to two years hard labor. Constance took the children to Switzerland and reverted to an old family name, ‘Holland’.

Upon his release, Oscar wrote The Ballad of Reading Goal, a response to the agony he experienced in prison. It was published shortly before Constance’s death in 1898. He and Bosie reunited briefly, but Oscar mostly spent the last three years of his life wandering Europe, staying with friends and living in cheap hotels. Sadly, he was unable to rekindle his creative fires. Oscar Wilde, a poet, novelist as well as dramatist died on November 30, 1900.

MAJOR LITERARY WORKS

1891 The Picture of Dorian Gray 《道林.格雷的画像》

1892 Lady Windermere’s Fan《韦德梅尔夫人的扇子》

1893 A Woman of No Importance 《无足轻重的女人》

1895 An Ideal Husband 《理想丈夫》

1895 The Importance of Being Earnest 《诚实的重要性》

II.SELECTED READING

Preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray

The artist is the creator of beautiful things.

To reveal art and conceal the artist is art’s aim.

The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things.

The highest, as the lowest, form of criticism is a mode of autobiography.

Those who find ugly meaning in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.

Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope.

They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty.

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book.

Book are well written, or badly written.

That is all.

The nineteenth-century dislike of Realism is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass.

The nineteenth-century dislike of Romanticism is the rage of Caliban not seeking is his own face in a glass.

The moral life of man forms part of the subject matter of the artist, but the morality of art consists in the perfect use of an imperfect medium. No artist desires to prove anything. Even things that are true can be proved.

No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an artist in an unpardonable mannerism of style.

No artist is ever morbid. The artist can express everything.

Thought and language are to the artist instruments of an art.

Vice and Virtue are to the artist materials for an art.

From the point of view of form, the type of all the arts is the art of the musician. From the point of view of feeling, the actor’s craft is the type.

All art is at once surface and symbol.

Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril.

Those who read the symbol do so at their peril.

It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.

Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex, and vital.

When critics disagree the artist is in accord with himself. We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely.

All art is quite useless.

Notes:

1.Caliban-----莎士比亚戏剧《暴风雨》中半人半兽的怪物。

2. Aestheticism------ “art for art’s sake” serves as the slogan for the Aestheticism movement. 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. 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. The main characteristics of the movement were: suggestion rather than statement, sensuality, massive use of symbols, and synaesthetic effects—that is, correspondence between words, colours and music.

Story synopsis: The Picture of Dorian Gray

The Picture of Dorian Gray is the only published novel written by Oscar Wilde and first came out as the lead story in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine on June 20, 1890. Wilde later revised this edition, making several alterations, and adding new chapters; the amended version was published in April 1891.

The novel tells of a young man named Dorian Gray, the subject of a painting by artist Basil Hallward. Basil is greatly impressed by Dorian's physical beauty and becomes strongly infatuated with him, believing that his beauty is responsible for a new mode in his art. Talking in Basil's garden, Dorian meets Lord Henry Wotton, a friend of Basil's, and becomes enthralled by Lord Henry's world view. Espousing a new kind of hedonism(享乐主义), Lord Henry suggests that the only thing worth pursuing in life is beauty, and the fulfilment of the senses. Realising that one day his beauty will fade, Dorian cries out, wishing that the portrait Basil has painted of him would age rather than himself. Dorian's wish is fulfilled, subsequently plunging him into a series of debauched acts. The portrait serves as a reminder of the effect each act has upon his soul, with each sin being displayed as a disfigurement of his form, or

through a sign of aging.

Enthralled by his own exquisite portrait, Dorian Gray exchanges his soul for eternal youth and beauty. Influenced by his friend Lord Henry Wotton, he is drawn into a corrupt double life; indulging his desires in secret while remaining a gentleman in the eyes of polite society. Only his portrait bears the traces of his decadence.

Dorian Gray's picture grows aged and corrupt while he continues to appear fresh and innocent. After he kills a young woman, "as surely as if I had cut her little throat with a knife," Dorian Gray is surprised to find no difference in his vision or surroundings. "The roses are not less lovely for all that. The birds sing just as happily in my garden." As Hallward tries to make sense of his creation, his epigram-happy friend Lord Henry Wotton encourages Dorian in his sensual quest with any number of Wildean paradoxes, including the delightful "When we are happy we are always good, but when we are good we are not always happy."

Finally, Dorian Gray decided to destroy the picture which stood as an awful record of his guilt. He went to the old schoolroom where the portrait was hanged on the wall. The portrait then had the appearance of cunning and triumph. Using the knife with which he had murdered Basil Hallward, Dorian stabbed the frightful portrait. The servants in the house heard a horrible cry of agony. Then they found, hanging on the wall, a fine portrait of their master as he had always looked. On the floor was a dead body, withered, wrinkled, in evening dress, with a knife in its breast. Only by his jewelry did they recognize Dorian Gray, who, in his desperate attempt to kill his conscience, had killed himself.

The Picture of Dorian Gray is considered one of the last works of classic gothic horror fiction with a strong Faustian theme. It deals with the artistic movement of the decadents, and homosexuality, both of which caused some controversy when the book was first published. However, in modern times, the book has been referred to as "one of the modern classics of Western literature."

Lady Windermere's Fan: A Play About a Good Woman is a four act comedy by Oscar Wilde, first produced 22 February 1892 at the St James Theatre in London. The play was first published in 1893. Like many of Wilde's comedies, it is a biting satire on the morals of Victorian society, particularly marriage.

The story concerns Lady Windermere who discovers that her husband may be having an affair with another woman. She confronts her husband but he instead invites the other woman, Mrs Erlynne, to her birthday ball. Angered by her husband's unfaithfulness, Lady Windermere leaves her husband for another lover. After discovering what has transpired, Mrs Erlynne follows Lady Windermere and attempts to persuade her to return to her husband and in the course of this, Mrs Erlynne is discovered in a compromising position. She sacrifices herself and her reputation in order to save Lady Windermere's marriage. Mrs. Erlynne was originated by Marion Terry.