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Book The Decay of Lying

    Book Details:
  • Author : Oscar Wilde
  • Publisher : Lindhardt og Ringhof
  • Release : 2022-04-18
  • ISBN : 8728104005
  • Pages : 39 pages

Download or read book The Decay of Lying written by Oscar Wilde and published by Lindhardt og Ringhof. This book was released on 2022-04-18 with total page 39 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Could it be that people who never lie are devoid of creativity? If that’s true, then all creative art must be founded in lies. ‘The Decay of Lying’ is a beguiling essay on the nature of art, in all its forms. Set in the library of a country house in Nottinghamshire, and written as a dialogue between Cyril and Vivian, ‘The Decay of Lying’ sets out to prove just how creative we can all be, as long as we defy societal conventions. Referencing everyone from the Ancient Greeks to Shakespeare, this is Wilde at his most thoughtful and mischievous. For anyone interested in art or witty debate. Oscar Wilde (1854 – 1900) was an Irish novelist, poet, playwright, and wit. He was an advocate of the Aesthetic movement, which extolled the virtues of art for the sake of art. During his career, Wilde wrote nine plays, including ‘The Importance of Being Earnest,’ ‘Lady Windermere’s Fan,’ and ‘A Woman of No Importance,’ many of which are still performed today. His only novel, ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’ was adapted for the silver screen, in the film, ‘Dorian Gray,’ starring Ben Barnes and Colin Firth. In addition, Wilde wrote forty-three poems, and seven essays. His life was the subject of a film, starring Stephen Fry.

Book The Decay of Lying

Download or read book The Decay of Lying written by Oscar Wilde and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2010-04 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'The Decay of Lying' sees Oscar Wilde explore his deepest preoccupations about the relationship between life and art, and examine the work of such writers as Shakespeare and Balzac.

Book The Decay of Lying

    Book Details:
  • Author : Oscar Wilde
  • Publisher : Les Prairies Numeriques
  • Release : 2020-11-27
  • ISBN : 9782382748213
  • Pages : 26 pages

Download or read book The Decay of Lying written by Oscar Wilde and published by Les Prairies Numeriques. This book was released on 2020-11-27 with total page 26 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Decay of Lying: An Observation By Oscar Wilde "The Decay of Lying - An Observation" is an essay by Oscar Wilde included in his collection of essays titled Intentions, published in 1891. This is a significantly revised version of the article that first appeared in the January 1889 issue of The Nineteenth Century.Wilde presents the essay in a Socratic dialogue between with Vivian and Cyril, two characters named after his own sons. Their conversation, though playful and whimsical, promotes Wilde's view of Romanticism over Realism. Vivian tells Cyril of an article he has been writing called "The Decay Of Lying: A Protest". According to Vivian, the decay of Lying "as an art, a science, and a social pleasure" is responsible for the decline of modern literature, which is excessively concerned with the representation of facts and social reality. He writes, "if something cannot be done to check, or at least to modify, our monstrous worship of facts, Art will become sterile and beauty will pass away from the land." Moreover, Vivian defends the idea that Life imitates Art far more than vice versa. Nature, he argues, is no less an imitation of Art than Life. Vivian also contends that Art is never representative of a time or place: rather, "the highest art rejects the burden of the human spirit [...] She develops purely on her own lines. She is not symbolic of any age." Vivian thus defends Aestheticism and the concept of "art for art's sake". At Cyril's behest, Vivian briefly summarizes the doctrines of the "new aesthetics" in the following terms: Art never expresses anything but itself.All bad art comes from returning to Life and Nature, and elevating them into ideals.Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life. It follows as a corollary that external Nature also imitates Art.Lying, the telling of beautiful untrue things, is the proper aim of Art.The essay ends with the two characters going outside, as Cyril asked Vivian to do at the beginning of the essay. Vivian finally complies, saying that twilight nature's "chief use" may be to "illustrate quotations from the poets."As Michèle Mendelssohn points out, "in an era when sociology was still in its infancy, psychology wasn't yet a discipline, and theories of performativity were still a long way off, Wilde's essay touched on a profound truth about human behaviour in social situations. The laws of etiquette governing polite society were, in fact, a mask. Tact was merely an elaborate art of impression management."

Book Beautiful Untrue Things

Download or read book Beautiful Untrue Things written by Gregory Mackie and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2019-07-11 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Borrowing its title from Oscar Wilde's essay "The Decay of Lying," this study engages questions of fraudulent authorship in the literary afterlife of Oscar Wilde. The unique cultural moment of Wilde's early-twentieth-century afterlife, Gregory Mackie argues, afforded a space for marginal and transgressive forms of literary production that, ironically enough, Wilde himself would have endorsed. Beautiful Untrue Things recovers the careers of several forgers who successfully inhabited the persona of the Victorian era's most infamous homosexual and arguably its most successful dramatist. More broadly, this study tells a larger story about Oscar Wilde's continued cultural impact at a moment when he had fallen out of favour with the literary establishment. It probes the activities of a series of eccentric and often outrageous figures who inhabited Oscar Wilde's much-mythologized authorial persona - in forging him, they effectively wrote as Wilde - in order to argue that literary forgery can be reimagined as a form of performance. But to forge Wilde and generate "beautiful untrue things" in his name is not only an exercise in role-playing - it is also crucially a form of imaginative world-making, resembling what we describe today as fan fiction.

Book Oscar Wilde and the Art of Lying

Download or read book Oscar Wilde and the Art of Lying written by D.D. Desjardins and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2019-01-03 with total page 119 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Utilizing Wilde’s own characters “Vivian” and “Cyril,” this critique in play format begins by discussing the playwright’s ideas on the relation of Art to Life, exploring his pronouncements on the artist’s true purpose. Wilde’s statement about the artist as a “creator of beauty”, found in his “Preface to the Picture of Dorian Gray”, is then examined with regard to his last and most popular play, The Importance of Being Earnest. Discussing …Earnest in extensis, this book discovers whether the elegant artificiality and epigrammatic conceits of contemporary farce prevail as beauty per Wilde’s earlier theories as expressed in The Decay of Lying. The consequence of Wilde’s assault on Victorian values is considered in terms of its social contribution to perceptions of beauty and the way in which we might appreciate both the playwright and …Earnest now.

Book Lies

    Book Details:
  • Author : Oscar Wilde
  • Publisher : Random House
  • Release : 2020-03-05
  • ISBN : 1473575397
  • Pages : 160 pages

Download or read book Lies written by Oscar Wilde and published by Random House. This book was released on 2020-03-05 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ‘The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Modern life would be very tedious if it were either, and modern literature a complete impossibility.’ Is lying simply an uncomfortable truth about life or something to be celebrated? In these dazzlingly witty pages we find deceptions of all kinds. From false names to imaginary friends to fictitious engagements, Wilde proves himself to be a connoisseur of creativity and argues that lying may be an art form in itself. Selected from The Importance of Being Earnest, The Decay of Lying and The Picture of Dorian Gray VINTAGE MINIS: GREAT MINDS. BIG IDEAS. LITTLE BOOKS. A series of short books by the world’s greatest writers on the experiences that make us human Also in the Vintage Minis series: Murder by Arthur Conan Doyle Power by William Shakespeare Jealousy by Marcel Proust Ghosts by M. R. James

Book What Is Existentialism

Download or read book What Is Existentialism written by Simone de Beauvoir and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2020-09-24 with total page 72 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'It is possible for man to snatch the world from the darkness of absurdity' How should we think and act in the world? These writings on the human condition by one of the twentieth century's great philosophers explore the absurdity of our notions of good and evil, and show instead how we make our own destiny simply by being. One of twenty new books in the bestselling Penguin Great Ideas series. This new selection showcases a diverse list of thinkers who have helped shape our world today, from anarchists to stoics, feminists to prophets, satirists to Zen Buddhists.

Book The Artist as Critic

Download or read book The Artist as Critic written by Oscar Wilde and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1982 with total page 475 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reprint. Originally published: New York: Random House, [1969]

Book Beautiful and Impossible Things  Selected Essays of Oscar Wilde

Download or read book Beautiful and Impossible Things Selected Essays of Oscar Wilde written by Oscar Wilde and published by New York Review of Books. This book was released on 2017-10-24 with total page 159 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This selection of Oscar Wilde’s writings provides a fresh perspective on his character and thinking. Compiled from his lecture tours, newspaper articles, essays and epigrams, these pieces show that beneath the trademark wit, Wilde was a deeply humane and visionary writer, as challenging today as he was in the late 1800s. This edition includes essays on interior design, prison reform, Shakespeare, the dramatic dialogue Decay of Lying and the seminal Soul of Man.

Book The Decay of Lying

    Book Details:
  • Author : Oscar Wilde
  • Publisher :
  • Release : 2022-03-03
  • ISBN : 9781471753534
  • Pages : 0 pages

Download or read book The Decay of Lying written by Oscar Wilde and published by . This book was released on 2022-03-03 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Decay of Lying: An Observation By Oscar Wilde"The Decay of Lying - An Observation" is an essay by Oscar Wilde included in his collection of essays titled Intentions, published in 1891. This is a significantly revised version of the article that first appeared in the January 1889 issue of The Nineteenth Century.Wilde presents the essay in a Socratic dialogue between with Vivian and Cyril, two characters named after his own sons. Their conversation, though playful and whimsical, promotes Wilde's view of Romanticism over Realism. Vivian tells Cyril of an article he has been writing called "The Decay Of Lying: A Protest". According to Vivian, the decay of Lying "as an art, a science, and a social pleasure" is responsible for the decline of modern literature, which is excessively concerned with the representation of facts and social reality. He writes, "if something cannot be done to check, or at least to modify, our monstrous worship of facts, Art will become sterile and beauty will pass away from the land." Moreover, Vivian defends the idea that Life imitates Art far more than vice versa. Nature, he argues, is no less an imitation of Art than Life. Vivian also contends that Art is never representative of a time or place: rather, "the highest art rejects the burden of the human spirit [...] She develops purely on her own lines. She is not symbolic of any age." Vivian thus defends Aestheticism and the concept of "art for art's sake". At Cyril's behest, Vivian briefly summarizes the doctrines of the "new aesthetics" in the following terms: Art never expresses anything but itself.All bad art comes from returning to Life and Nature, and elevating them into ideals.Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life. It follows as a corollary that external Nature also imitates Art.Lying, the telling of beautiful untrue things, is the proper aim of Art.The essay ends with the two characters going outside, as Cyril asked Vivian to do at the beginning of the essay. Vivian finally complies, saying that twilight nature's "chief use" may be to "illustrate quotations from the poets."As Michèle Mendelssohn points out, "in an era when sociology was still in its infancy, psychology wasn't yet a discipline, and theories of performativity were still a long way off, Wilde's essay touched on a profound truth about human behaviour in social situations. The laws of etiquette governing polite society were, in fact, a mask. Tact was merely an elaborate art of impression management."

Book The Canterville Ghost and Other Stories

Download or read book The Canterville Ghost and Other Stories written by Oscar Wilde and published by Modernista. This book was released on 2024-05-30 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Few authors are as closely associated with English wit as Oscar Wilde: the sharp-witted dandy, always ready with a cutting remark. His brilliant conversational skills made him famous even before he began his literary career. The stories in this volume showcase his drastic humour and scathing social critique. Among them, »The Model Millionaire« upends social hierarchies, and in »The Canterville Ghost,« ancient traditions meet modern times in the form of a vulgar and unsentimental American family, creating problems for a ghost that has had it too easy for centuries. OSCAR WILDE, born in 1854 in Dublin, died in 1900 in Paris, was an Irish prose writer, playwright, essayist, and poet. Wilde's significance as a symbol for persecuted homosexuals around the world is immeasurable. Wilde himself was sentenced to prison and hard labour, his works were boycotted, theatrical productions were shut down, and he was publicly vilified. The Picture of Dorian Gray [1890] is his most famous work.

Book The Essential Oscar Wilde

    Book Details:
  • Author : Oscar Wilde
  • Publisher : Simon and Schuster
  • Release : 2013-08-20
  • ISBN : 1627933654
  • Pages : 605 pages

Download or read book The Essential Oscar Wilde written by Oscar Wilde and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013-08-20 with total page 605 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Collected her in one omnibus edition are Oscar Wilde's most important works including The Importance of Being Earnest, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Salome, Selected Poems of Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man Under Socialism, The Happy Prince and Other Tales, and The Canterville Ghost. These works of poetry, fiction, drama, and prose encompass Wilde's entire career and they display his range of style and wit. Wilde is one of the most important writers in the history of the English language. Wilder Publications is a green publisher. All of our books are printed to order. This reduces waste and helps us keep prices low while greatly reducing our impact on the environment.

Book On Bullshit

    Book Details:
  • Author : Harry G. Frankfurt
  • Publisher : Princeton University Press
  • Release : 2009-01-10
  • ISBN : 1400826535
  • Pages : 80 pages

Download or read book On Bullshit written by Harry G. Frankfurt and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2009-01-10 with total page 80 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 New York Times bestseller Featured on The Daily Show and 60 Minutes The acclaimed book that illuminates our world and its politics by revealing why bullshit is more dangerous than lying One of the most prominent features of our world is that there is so much bullshit. Yet we have no clear understanding of what bullshit is, how it’s distinct from lying, what functions it serves, and what it means. In his acclaimed bestseller On Bullshit, Harry Frankfurt, who was one of the world’s most influential moral philosophers, explores this important subject, which has become a central problem of politics and our world. With his characteristic combination of philosophical acuity, psychological insight, and wry humor, Frankfurt argues that bullshitters misrepresent themselves to their audience not as liars do, that is, by deliberately making false claims about what is true. Rather, bullshitters seek to convey a certain impression of themselves without being concerned about whether anything at all is true. They quietly change the rules governing their end of the conversation so that claims about truth and falsity are irrelevant. Although bullshit can take many innocent forms, excessive indulgence in it can eventually undermine the bullshitter’s capacity to tell the truth in a way that lying does not. Liars at least acknowledge that the truth matters. Because of this, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are. Remarkably prescient and insightful, On Bullshit is a small book that explains a great deal about our time.

Book Intentions Annotated

    Book Details:
  • Author : Oscar Wilde
  • Publisher : Independently Published
  • Release : 2021-07-06
  • ISBN :
  • Pages : 196 pages

Download or read book Intentions Annotated written by Oscar Wilde and published by Independently Published. This book was released on 2021-07-06 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Intentions By Oscar Wilde was published in 1891 when Wilde was at the height of his form, these brilliant essays on art, literature, criticism, and society display the flamboyant poseur's famous wit and wide learning. A leading spokesman for the English Aesthetic movement, Wilde promoted art for art's sake against critics who argued that art must serve a moral purpose. On every page of this collection the gifted literary stylist admirably demonstrates not only that the characteristics of art are "distinction, charm, beauty, and imaginative power, but also that criticism itself can be raised to an art form possessing these very qualities. In the opening essay, Wilde laments the decay of Lying as an art, a science, and a social pleasure. He takes to task modern literary realists like Henry James and Emile Zola for their "monstrous worship of facts" and stifling of the imagination. What makes art wonderful, he says, is that it is absolutely indifferent to fact, invents, imagines, dreams, and keeps between herself and reality the impenetrable barrier of beautiful style, of decorative or ideal treatment.

Book The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays

Download or read book The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays written by Oscar Wilde and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2012-02-07 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A universal favorite, The Importance of Being Earnest displays Oscar Wilde’s wit and theatrical genius at their brilliant best. Subtitled “A Trivial Comedy for Serious People,” this hilarious attack on Victorian manners and morals turns a pompous world on its head, lets duplicity lead to happiness, and makes riposte the highest form of art. Written, according to Wilde, “by a butterfly for butterflies,” it is a dazzling masterpiece of comic entertainment. Although it was originally written in four acts, The Importance of Being Earnest is usually performed in a three-act version. This authoritative edition features an appendix that restores valuable lines that appeared in the original. Also included in this special collection are Wilde’s first comedy success, Lady Windermere’s Fan, and his richly sensual melodrama, Salomé, which he called “that terrible coloured little tragedy I once in some strange mood wrote”—and which shocked and enraged the censors of his time. Includes an Introduction by Sylvan Barnet and an Afterword by Elise Bruhl and Michael Gamer

Book The Freedom to Be Free

Download or read book The Freedom to Be Free written by Hannah Arendt and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2018-10-02 with total page 30 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This lecture is a brilliant encapsulation of Arendt’s widely influential arguments on revolution, and why the American Revolution—unlike all those preceding it—was uniquely able to install political freedom. “The Freedom to be Free” was first published in Thinking Without a Banister, a varied collection of Arendt’s essays, lectures, reviews, interviews, speeches, and editorials—which, taken together, manifest the relentless activity of her mind and character and contain within them the articulations of wide and sophisticated range of her political thought. A Vintage Shorts Selection. An ebook short.