Oscar Wilde: Life, Works, and Philosophy

Posted on Mar 2, 2025 in English Studies

Oscar Wilde: Key Concepts in His Works

Wit, Irony, Puns, and Epigrams:

Wit: The ability to create intellectual pleasure through surprising combinations or contrasts of previously unconnected ideas or expressions.
Irony: The use of words to express something different from, and often opposite to, their literal meaning. It involves a deliberate contrast between apparent and intended meaning.
Epigram: A sharp, witty saying that expresses a single thought or idea concisely. It is often a clever and paradoxical statement.
Pun: A play on words; the humorous use of a word or phrase to emphasize a different meaning or application, highlighting its ambiguities and nuances.

Key Themes:

Concern with society, particularly fashionable society. Simultaneous engagement with and mockery of social rules and forms.
Systematic inversion of common values and clichés.
Contradictions, dualities, equivocality, and paradox. Wilde lived in a “permanent fear of not being misunderstood.” He was a married homosexual, a Protestant with lifelong leanings, an Anglo-Francophile, and a Celt at heart.
The importance of style, external appearances, social circles, gossip, artifice, and effect.

Irish Background: Born to prominent Dublin intellectuals. He learned French and German early in life.
Academic Background: Attended Trinity College (Dublin) and Magdalen College (Oxford).
Career: Active in journalism and editorship. Successful playwright, involved in fashionable social circles.
Conviction: In 1895, he was convicted of “gross indecency” and sentenced to two years of imprisonment with hard labor.
Exile and Death: Released from prison in 1897. Lived abroad (France, Italy, Switzerland) until his death in Paris (1900).

Victorian society was characterized by agonizing over values and morality, including:

Nietzsche’s influence: Moral value was seen as a fraud and a tool of domination, leading to radical perspectivism and skepticism.

Flourished at the end of the 19th century.
Oxford Aesthetes: Influenced by Walter Pater (Studies in the History of the Renaissance).
‘Art for Art’s sake’: Art should be unconstrained by social rules and everyday concepts of good and evil. The aim of aesthetic experience is the pursuit of beauty. The importance of personal appreciation and pleasure.
The Artist as a sacred figure.
Escape from the stifling confines of Victorian painting and writing, which carried the burden of moral, social, and sentimental baggage.

Influenced by John Ruskin and William Morris.
Critique of industrial capitalism and mass society.
Influence on the British Labour Party, Indian nationalism, the modern ecological and gay rights movements, and European socialism.
Wilde: “The Soul of Man Under Socialism” (1891): Argued that a healthy material base and equality of opportunity are preconditions for a liberal democratic society.

Demonstrated close knowledge of contemporary theater. Wilde was on close terms with actresses and actors.
Depicted a world circumscribed by conventions and measured by rituals, such as the English tea ceremony and the endless round of dances and luncheons.
Offered an ironic exposure of English society and a critique of the absurdity of all forms and conventions.
Reflected Wilde’s enjoyment of the pleasures available at the tables of the English leisured classes.