Oscar Wilde
"a man of genius makes no mistakes; his errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery."

James Joyce

Genius is based on many elements, human and circumstantial. Nothing enables genius to evolve from some internal inchoate spark into a staggering, illuminating flare as the capacity to be external to social norms. The public expects artists to move well beyond the quotidian in artistic form. The funny lines in a play would be burlesque, if they were not also insightful. The plot of a novel would be banal if it lacked symbolism. The reach of literary metaphor is based on a primal idiosyncratic resonance with each member of an audience. But the level of tolerance expressed by this same public for artists' lifestyles that ride the edge does not match their appreciation of the products of genius. The public adored Oscar Wilde -- for as long as he stayed sufficiently within…...

mla

References

Bentley, E. The Importance of Being Earnest. In The Playwright as Thinker (New York, NY: Reznal and Hitchcock, 1946). Oscar Wilde: A Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. Richard Ellmann, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1969, 111-115.

Bradford, W. Oscar Wilde: Biography of the author of The Importance of Being Earnest. About.com, The New York Times Company, 2011. Retrieved  http://plays.about.com/od/playwrights/a/oscarwilde.htm 

Ellmann, R. Oscar Wilde. New York, NY: Knopf, 1987.

Gagnier, R. Idylls of the Marketplace, Oscar Wilde and the Victorian Public. Palo Alto, California: Stanford University Press, 1986.

" (Eksteins, 1994)
Eksteins writes that Britain had "in the last century...damned her great poets and writers, Byron had been chased out of the country, Shelley forbidden to raise his children, and Oscar Wilde sent to prison." (1994) Pearce (2003) states that Wilde "was a major symbol of the sexual anarchy that threatened the purposive and reproductive modes of the bourgeois family. Algy mocks the utilitarian nature of modern marriage thus: The amount of women in London who flirt with their own husbands is perfectly scandalous. It looks so bad. It is simply washing one's clean linen in public." (Shoewalter, 1992; in Pearce, 2003)

The narratives of this period were realist in nature and such that centered around "marriage and inheritance were giving way to fantastic 'finde siecle' tales about split personalities. (Showalter, 1992: in Pearce, 2003) Many of Wilde's plays were a "critique of the naturalization of bourgeois relations" and these…...

mla

Clausson, Nils (2003) Culture and Corruption": Paterian Self-Development vs. Gothic Degeneration in Oscar Wilde's the Picture of Dorian Gray. Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville Fall 2003. Online available at  http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3708/is_200310/ai_n9329138/print?tag=artBody;col1 

Conen, Simon (2000) Social criticism in Oscar Wilde's Lady Windermere's Fan University of Trier 2000 Archive No.: V17672

McCauley, the Life and Works of Oscar Wilde 30 Dec 2003. www.skoletorget.no.

This forces us to think that even though we may try to fool others and ourselves, the truth of who we are is never far from what we are trying to show.
Sincere -- or earnest -- is, it appears, the worst thing that one can be in Victorian England. Being sincere means that one has to be true to who they are and must not try to deceive anyone. That is to say that being sincere could perhaps mean being boring, smug, or solemn. These are precisely the qualities that Wilde saw as the distinguishing elements of the Victorian character. Oscar Wilde's story about double lives in trying to conform to ideals of a culture have of course been attributed to his own dealings with being homosexual in Victorian society (Woods 1999). It can be surmised that Wilde himself knew much about having to keep up false pretenses in…...

mla

References

Eltis, S. Revising Wilde: Society and subversion in the plays of Oscar Wilde. New York:

Oxford

The Independent. (2009). "Greg Kinnear -- 'We all lead double lives.'" the Independent.

Accessed on March 4, 2011:  http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/greg-kinnear-we-all-lead-double-lives-1643711.html

Being Earnest
A Critique of Wilde's the Importance of Being Earnest

First performed in 1895, Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest satirized manners and social customs of late Victorian England. Focusing on a pair of young men who live "double lives," the comedy brings to light an element of English society that was ripe for exposure. Wilde was a master satirist. With this play, he shows how cynical attitudes creep into one and before long lead to all sorts of problems. For Jack and Algernon, maintaining a phony second identity is the only way to lead a satisfying life. However, as the story unfolds, the two realize that true fulfillment can only be obtained through honest living. This paper will critique Wilde's Importance of Being Earnest and show the plot, themes, characters and title all work to give an "important" message to the audience.

Critical Summary

Otto einert (1956) states that The…...

mla

Reference List

Foster, R. (1956). Wilde as Parodist: A Second Look at the Importance of Being

Earnest. College English, 18(1): 18-23.

Pearce, J. (2000). The Unmasking of Oscar Wilde. UK: HarperCollins.

Reinert, O. (1956). Satiric Strategy in The Importance of Being Earnest. College English, 18(1): 14-18.

In a related sense, Wilde also distinguishes between the superiority of the 'lower' sentient creatures who are more attuned to life compared to higher 'rational' beings who, apparently, the more rational they are the further detached they are from true existence. The student is submerged in the dicta and data of his college education that reduces realness and beauty to mathematical figures and facts. The Oak Tree understood the Nightingale but the Student "could not understand what the Nightingale was saying to him, for he only knew the things that are written down in books."

The princess is even worse. Taken up by the mendacities of her court status and socialization, she is so distanced from her emotional self as to regard the Student as signifier of a lower rank and the rose as to be insubstantial compared to that of 'real jewels': "everybody knows that jewels cost far more than…...

mla

References

Artquotes.net. Oscar Wilde quotes www.artquotes.net/motivational-quotes/oscar-wilde.htm

Salmon, D. (n.d..) Three Ways of Knowing: Scientific, Phenomenological and Spiritual

 http://www.infinityfoundation.com/mandala/i_es/i_es_salmo_knowing_frameset.htm 

Wilde, O. The Nightingale and the Rose

Lady Bracknell "The Importance Being Earnest" Oscar Wilde title ' make laugh make mad?"
Oscar Wilde wrote an amazing piece of satire of Victorian times, placing his characters at the intersection between social normality and personal normality. As some of the most important characters of "The Importance of Being Earnest" have a double life, he goes deep into societal norms and presents a world where individuals take the freedom to be themselves.

The play rotates around the issue of marriage and the fact that in Victorian times, for the upper class, these were made in the ways of interest. The important issues were not love, matching or personal chemistry, but nobility -- coming from origins and parents, and money.

The action starts when Algernon Moncrieff receives the visit of his good friend Ernest Worthing, coming there to propose into marriage Algernon's cousin, Gwendolen. As a condition of acceptance, Algernon wants to know…...

Dominican Fantasies, ritten and Unwritten:
The use of science fiction in the Brief ondrous Life of Oscar ao

Juan Diaz's novel The Brief ondrous Life of Oscar ao details the life of an overweight Dominican boy who has aspirations of being a romantic hero that are continually thwarted by his great size and unattractive physical appearance. However, one of the dominant themes of the book is that appearances can deceive. Despite the fact that he is ugly on the outside, Oscar has a beautiful soul. His inner life is at odds with his outer life. One way in which Oscar deals with this is by escaping into a world of fantasy novels and characters. Diaz's coming-of-age novel is thus very much a book 'about' other books, just as much as it is a book about a man's life. Its postmodern nature is clear in the sense that the novels and cultural myths…...

mla

Works Cited

Diaz, Juan. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. New York: Riverhead, 2008.

Lingam, John. Review of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.

The Quarterly Conversation, 2008. [7 Dec 2012]

http://quarterlyconversation.com/the-brief-wondrous-life-of-oscar-wao-by-junot-diaz-review

Role of Memory in Shaping Morality
Oscar Wilde once wrote that, "The man with a clear conscience probably has a poor memory." The role of memory and remembering in shaping moral decisions is a concept that is central to sections of Hannah Arendt's Responsibility and Judgment and Friedrich Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morals as both texts wrestle with how one knows that an action is morally wrong. It is a question that goes back to the earliest days of philosophical inquiry under Socrates: Does the understanding of morality come inherently from something within man or is it merely inculcated by society and thereby remembered. Drawing from her own experiences as a German Jewish refugee and after World War II as a reported at the Nuremberg Trials, Arendt argues that morality must exist beyond the scale of the individual as there is too much variability within humanity's perspective on moral…...

picture Dorian Grey" ilde. Then, refer poem "One a Chamber --
The Picture of Dorian Grey: The conflict between the interior and exterior

The Picture of Dorian Grey is a tale of concealment. The titular protagonist Dorian begins the novel a beautiful and innocent young man. The portrait that the painter Basil Hallward creates of Dorian and Dorian's real image is the same in the first chapter of the work. However, author Oscar ide suggests that through the power of art, the created image is so lifelike it takes on the real, physical burdens of aging. As Dorian grows dissipated and cruel, he does not physically change, although the painting changes. The painting becomes a kind of secret, true self for Dorian, hidden in the recesses of his home. No one is allowed to see it, except Dorian. The painting is a living, realistic depiction of Dorian's inner life, versus Dorian's…...

mla

Works Cited

Dickinson, Emily. "One need not be a Chamber -- to be Haunted -- "

Complete e-text:  http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/emilydickinson/10622 

Wilde, Oscar. The Portrait of Dorian Grey. Complete e-text:

http://www.doriangray.net/

" (4) it is unclear how to understand "things are because we see them." Traditionally perception is conceived as a passive process: we open our eyes and receive input from the world. Kant suggests that perhaps it is not so passive: we "organize" the world into temporal and spatial dimensions, attribute cause and effect, etc. But what Wilde suggests here is even more radical. The "things are because" suggests a causal relationship, such that what we see exists as an effect of seeing. It would be as if looking "paints" the world. But this is completely absurd. Onto what would seeing "paint" the world? and, even weirder, notice that it wouldn't be that seeing paints the world so that we could then look at what was painted. Rather, it would be that seeing is painting, so that we always see and paint simultaneously, always just "creating" whatever we see, under…...

mla

1. Wilde, Oscar. Intentions. New York: Prometheus Books, 2004. 1-55. Print.

2. Wilde, Oscar. The Picture of Dorian Gray and Other Writings. New York: Pocket Books, 2005. 241-365. Print.

The Decay of Lying was first published in 1889; the Golden Stair is from 1880.

Queer Theory and Oscar Wilde
Analysis of "Queer Theory" by Annamarie Jagose in relation to Dorian Gray's character in "The picture of Dorian Gray" by Oscar Wilde

In her discussion of "Queer theory," author Annamarie Jagose provides a distinction between the concepts 'queer' and the dichotomous relationship between 'lesbian' and 'gay.' Jagose argued in her discussion of this theory that queer was a concept that had politically evolved through the years in relation to the proliferation of gay and lesbian studies.

What makes the queer concept vital to the study of gays and lesbians, as well as issues of homosexuality and heterosexuality is that it provides a 'gray area' in which no distinctions between male and female and gay and lesbian are found. Queer appeals to the 20th century philosophers and social scientists simply because it offers an avenue through which gender and sex can be discussed without the political inequality often found…...

mla

Bibliography

Jagose, A. (1996). "Queer Theory." Australian Humanities Review web site. Available at: http://www.lib.latrobe.edu.au/AHR/archive/Issue-Dec-1996/jagose.html.

Wilde, O. (1994). The Picture of Dorian Gray. NY: Penguin Books.

And yet, the clockwork puppet, certainly but a shadow of a living woman, can only try to sing, try to move out from the shadows, out from the stereotype crushing her. The horrible marionette, in contrast, rather than singing, smoked its cigarette and tried to pretend it was alive. Finally, the utter hopelessness of the dark side of Victorian society comes out with the phrase, "The dead are dancing with the dead, the dust is whirling with the dust," evoking the funeral speak of "ashes to ashes, dust to dust," and the dead -- the underside of society, those with whom the proper Victorian had little use, pass from love to lust, from light to dark, tire of the game as they do the synthetic waltz, their shadows morphing into nothing as they continue to wheel and whirl, finally weary of it all.
The literary images of this poem, coupled…...

mla

REFERENCES and WORKS CONSULTED

Hay, C. "A Glimpse at Lust Redeemed." The Victorian Web. 2003.Cited in:

 http://www.liu.edu/cwis/cwp/library/workshop/citmla.htm 

"Welcome to the Twilight City." HistoricalEye.Com., (n.d.). Cited in:

 http://www.historicaleye.com/Lost1.html

She does not believe that she has a reputation worthy enough of being allowed entry into the upper echelons of Victorian society. Her perception of Cecily, and her prospects for marrying her nephew -- change dramatically, however, when Lady Bracknell ascertains how much money the young woman stands to inherit. The following quotation suitably demonstrates this point.
A hundred and thirty thousand pounds! And in the Funds! Miss Cardew seems to me a most attractive young lady, now that I look at her. Few girls of the present day have any really solid qualities, any of the qualities that last, and improve with time. We live, I regret to say, in an age of surfaces (Act III).

Once Bracknell finds out how much money Cecily is worth, the latter becomes "attractive." The true irony in this quotation is the fact that Lady Bracknell's sudden change in attitude about Cecily as a…...

Jack proceeds to let the audience know "…the vital importance of Being Earnest."
Distortion, Moral Conduct, and Restoration Comedy

Of course, deception and frivolity are part of a farce, and the way that ilde has written the play characters switch identities as a way for the theme to be deliberately distorted. So this bothers critic Mary McCarthy, who complained that the play has the character of a "…ferocious idyll" and insists that the only moral alternatives offered by ilde are "selfishness and servility" (Parker, 1974). By "deliberately distorting actuality" ilde is actually expressing what most people can see is a "comic version of the human condition," Parker writes in the Modern Literature Quarterly. Parker explains that though McCarthy is using standards that don't really fit with a farcical play (particularly in that era), she may be onto something with her assertion that the play is about selfishness because indeed the heroes…...

mla

Works Cited

Parker, D. (1974). Oscar Wild's Great Farce: The Importance of Being Earnest. Modern Literature Quarterly, 35(2), 173-186.

Princeton University. (2008). Restoration Comedy. Retrieved June 28, 2013, from  http://www.princeton.edu .

Wikipedia. (2010). The Importance of Being Earnest. Retrieved June 28, 2013, from  http://en.wikipedia.org .

records court transcripts from "The Trials of Oscar ilde," when the opposing council at the trial asks the defendant, Oscar ilde, if he kissed one of the boys whom ilde was supposed to have engaged in homosexual practices, ilde appears unfazed. hen asked if he kissed the boy, ilde, with customary wit, responded that he did not, because "he was a very ugly boy." This kind of exchange forces the reader to ask the question not so much why ilde was found guilty of gross indecency, but why ilde ever believed he could be found innocent of the love that "dare not speak its name." (Longman Anthology 2125)
Throughout both of his trials, ilde adopts a kind of insouciant, provocative pose that seems, to the modern eyes, to be a 'typical' portrait of a flamboyant male homosexual. Because Oscar ilde's artistic medium has become synonymous with such a posture it…...

mla

Works Cited

Barry, Peter. Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory. Manchester University Press, 2002.

Longman, Addison Wesley. The Longman Anthology-British Literature-Compact Edition-Volume B2. University of Southern California Press, 1999