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Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde. A very misunderstood man. Life facts. October 16, 1854-November 30, 1900 Born into an Anglo-Irish family to Sir William Wilde and Jane Francesca Elgee Educated at home until the age of nine Attended Portora Royal School and then studied classics at Trinity College until 1874

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Oscar Wilde

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  1. Oscar Wilde A very misunderstood man

  2. Life facts • October 16, 1854-November 30, 1900 • Born into an Anglo-Irish family to Sir William Wilde and Jane Francesca Elgee • Educated at home until the age of nine • Attended Portora Royal School and then studied classics at Trinity College until 1874 • Continued his education on scholarship at Magdalene College, Oxford until 1878

  3. The Aesthetic Movement • Sparked by the philosophy of John Ruskin and Walter Pater • Challenges the idea that there is a contract between the audience and the artist. • Make an art of life • “Art for art’s sake” • Devotion to beauty and the aesthetic (artistic, visual)

  4. After College • Returned to Dublin • Fell in love with Florence Balcombe (while she was engaged to Bram Stoker) • Left in 1878 with a broken heart • Next six years traveling through London, Paris, and the United States delivering lectures • Married Constance Lloyd in 1884 • Had two sons, Cyril (1885) and Vyvyan (1886)

  5. Bisexual, homosexual or pederast? • Said to have had numerous close relationships with both men his own age and teenaged boys • Friends with Karl-Heinrich Ulrichs – gay rights activist • Met Walt Whitman in 1882 while in the U.S. • Introduced theory that Shakespeare’s sonnets were written out of the poet’s love of Elizabethan boy actor Willie Hughes

  6. 1895: A life-changing year • the Marquess of Queensbury referred to Wilde as a homosexual publicly • Wilde had a close friendship with Lord Alfred Douglas • Wilde sued for libel and lost • Sentenced to two years of hard labor in two separate prisons • Wife sought legal separation • Released in 1897, unhealthy and penniless • Died of cerebral meningitis in 1900

  7. Wilde reacted against these ideas in Victorian society • Industrialization • Hypocrisy, complacency, artificiality • The Romantic view of Nature – he found it crude and unshaped • The People – believed the artist was to be isolated and perhaps persecuted for his genius • The aristocracy • The affluent middle classes • Melodrama – where characters may be seen as talking ‘directly from life’

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