Oscar Wilde: Life, Works, and Literary Impact

Sociocultural Context of Oscar Wilde's Era

From the end of the 19th century to World War I, we witnessed a transitional period in many fields, marked by significant changes in old traditions, social standards, and men's thoughts. This era went in consonance with a weakening of Victorian values, alongside the economic and political decline of the state and a pervasive loss of faith. The rise of pessimism was profoundly reflected in almost all the literature of the time.

Literary Movements Influencing Oscar Wilde

During this period, Realism still occupied a dominant position in literary techniques, but other significant movements were also emerging and gaining influence:

• Naturalism
• Aestheticism
• Symbolism

Aestheticism Defined

The Aesthetic Movement is a defined movement in literature, fine art, furniture, metalwork, ceramics, textiles, and wallpapers in later nineteenth-century Britain. It emphasized the pursuit of beauty and art for art's sake.

Additionally, Impressionism and Expressionism, primarily shown in paintings, had a great influence on British writers, shaping new approaches to literary expression.

Biographical Notes on Oscar Wilde

Wilde was born in Dublin in 1854 into a highly cultured context. His father was a distinguished surgeon, and his family was Anglo-Protestant; Wilde himself converted to Catholicism on his deathbed. Oscar was a brilliant young man who read classics at Trinity College, Dublin. He then received a scholarship to Magdalen College at Oxford, where he came under the profound influence of the doctrine of Aestheticism and its prophet, Walter Pater. Aestheticism became the keynote of his creed, and he declared that beauty was the ideal after which everyone should strive. His marriage in 1884 was a significant social spectacle of the year.

Oscar Wilde's Distinctive Literary Style

Wilde's aestheticism was not essentially in conflict with Victorian melodrama; rather, he sought to subtilize it, just as he aimed to make sensationalism witty. It was in the 1890s that the Aesthetic Movement flourished most vigorously. Wilde's plays, however, were not the direct product of those views of art and life which he expressed in his symbolic story The Picture of Dorian Gray or in his carefully wrought fairy tales. In his comedies, he wrote primarily for the theatre and for commercial success.

Key Works of Fiction by Oscar Wilde

• Salomé
• The Picture of Dorian Gray
• De Profundis