Life and works

Oscar Wilde was born in Dublin in 1854. He attending Trinity College in his hometown and after he was sent
to Oxford, where he got a “degree with honors” (laurea con lode) in Classics.

He was diffrent thanks to his eccentricity.

He became a disciple of Walter Pater and accepted the theory of Art for Art’s sake!

After graduating he moved to London, where he “became known” (divenne conosciuto” for his witty and
his characteristic ‘dandy’ style of dress.

In 1881 Wilde published, at his own expense, a collection entitled “Poems and lectured in the United
States”.

His works amazed the American people.

In New York he said that “Aestheticism was a search for the beautiful, a science (infact, thanks to it, men
looked for the relationship between painting, sculpture and poetry, which were different forms of the same
truth”).

The tour was a great success for Wilde, who became famous for his irony, his attitudes and his poses.

Upon his return to Europe in 1883, he married Constance Lloyd amd with her he had 2 sons.

By this point in his career he was best known as a great Orator.

In 1880 Wilde started to published a series of short stories, like “The Canterville Ghost”, The Happy Prince
and “Other Tales” (written for his children) and the novel The Picture of Dorian Gray.

After his first and only novel, he developed an interest in drama and comedy.

In the late 1890s he produced some works like “A Woman of No Importance” “An Ideal Husband” and his
masterpiece “The Importance of Being Earnest”.

However, the novel and Salomé (a tragedy written in French) damaged the writer’s reputation because
critics considered the novel immoral and the tragedy obscene.

He was sentenced to two years of hard labour.

While he was in prison he wrote “De Profundis”, a long letter to Bosie which was published posthumously
in 1905. When he was released, he was a broken man; his wife refused to see him and he went into exile in
France, where he lived his last years in poverty.

He died of meningitis in 1900.

Dandy

Wilde adopted the “aesthetic ideal”, infact he said that “My life is like a work of art”.

Wilde’s dandy is an aristocrat and his elegance is a symbol of the superiority of his spirit; the dandy uses
his intelligence to amaze people and asks for absolute freedom. Wilde’s interest in beauty (clothes, words,
or physical beauty) had no moral value.

He rejected the didacticism that had characterized the Victorian novel of the first half of the century.