Download or read book Oscar Wilde written by Richard Ellmann and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2013-09-04 with total page 737 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of both the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize, Oscar Wilde is the definitive biography of the tortured poet and playwright and the last book by renowned biographer and literary critic Richard Ellmann. Ellmann dedicated two decades to the research and writing of this biography, resulting in a complex and richly detailed portrait of Oscar Wilde. Ellman captures the wit, creativity, and charm of the psychologically and sexually complicated writer, as well as the darker aspects of his personality and life. Covering everything from Wilde's rise as a young literary talent to his eventual imprisonment and death in exile with exquisite detail, Ellmann's fascinating account of Wilde's life and work is a resounding triumph.
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.
Download or read book Essays written by Oscar Wilde and published by Books for Libraries. This book was released on 1972 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
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."
Download or read book The Essays of Oscar Wilde written by Oscar Wilde and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2015-12-12 with total page 110 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Oscar Wilde (16 October 1854 - 30 November 1900) was an extremely popular Irish writer and poet who wrote in different forms throughout his career and became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s. Today he is remembered for his epigrams, plays and the strange circumstances of his imprisonment, followed by his early death. At the turn of the 1890s, Wilde refined his ideas about the supremacy of art in a series of dialogues and essays, and incorporated themes of decadence, duplicity, and beauty into his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890). The opportunity to construct aesthetic details precisely, and combine them with larger social themes, drew Wilde to write drama. He wrote Salome (1891) in French in Paris but it was refused a license. Unperturbed, Wilde produced four society comedies in the early 1890s, which made him one of the most successful playwrights of late Victorian London. Wilde reached the height of his fame and success with The Importance of Being Earnest (1895).
Download or read book The Essays of Oscar Wilde written by Oscar Wilde and published by . This book was released on 1916 with total page 650 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
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.
Download or read book The Essays of Oscar Wilde written by Oscar Wilde and published by . This book was released on 1916 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Essays by Oscar Wilde written by Oscar Wilde and published by . This book was released on 1950 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Critical Essays on Oscar Wilde written by Regenia Gagnier and published by Macmillan Reference USA. This book was released on 1991 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gagnier's introduction and selection of essays on Wilde (1854-1900) mainly concern contemporary American criticism, including three original essays written for this volume. Together they constitute an assessment of what Wilde's work and history mean for the US at this juncture of world history and social theory. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
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]
Download or read book The Soul of Man Under Socialism and Selected Critical Prose written by Oscar Wilde and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2007-02-22 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Selection includes The Portrait of Mr W.H., Wilde's defence of Dorian Gray, reviews, and the writings from 'Intentions' (1891): 'The Decay of Lying, 'Pen, Pencil, Poison', and 'The Critic as Artist'. Wilde is familiar to us as the ironic critic behind the social comedies, as the creator of the beautiful and doomed Dorian Gray, as the flamboyant aesthete and the demonised homosexual. This volume presents us with a different Wilde. Wilde emerges here as a deep and serious reader of literature and philosophy, and an eloquent and original thinker about society and art.
Download or read book Intentions written by Oscar Wilde and published by . This book was released on 1891 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally 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, [art] invents, imagines, dreams, and keeps between herself and reality the impenetrable barrier of beautiful style, of decorative or ideal treatment."The next essay, "Pen, Pencil, and Poison," is a fascinating literary appreciation of the life of Thomas Griffiths Wainewright, a talented painter, art critic, antiquarian, friend of Charles Lamb, and - murderer.The heart of the collection is the long two-part essay titled "The Critic as Artist." In one memorable passage after another, Wilde goes to great lengths to show that the critic is every bit as much an artist as the artist himself, in some cases more so. A good critic is like a virtuoso interpreter: "When Rubinstein plays ... he gives us not merely Beethoven, but also himself, and so gives us Beethoven absolutely...made vivid and wonderful to us by a new and intense personality. When a great actor plays Shakespeare we have the same experience."Finally, in "The Truth of Masks," Wilde returns to the theme of art as artifice and creative deception. This essay focuses on the use of masks, disguises, and costume in Shakespeare.For newcomers to Wilde and those who already know his famous plays and fiction, this superb collection of his criticism offers many delights.
Download or read book Oscar Wilde a Collection of Critical Essays written by Richard Ellmann and published by . This book was released on 1969 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The career and accomplishments of the brilliant writer whose war against the Establishment ended with his imprisonment and disgrace.
Download or read book Oscar Wilde s Essays and Lectures written by Oscar Wilde and published by ARC Manor. This book was released on 2008-02 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Please visit www.ArcManor.com for other works by this and other authors.
Download or read book The Works of Oscar Wilde written by Oscar Wilde and published by . This book was released on 1909 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Oscar Wilde written by Philippe Jullian and published by Trans-Atlantic Publications Incorporated. This book was released on 1994 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: '..a biographer of supreme intelligence and industry, since the bibliography is immense and he has delved into it with extraordinary taste and imagination.' - The Spectator 'An excellent book, detailed where detail was still needed, sensibly perfunctory where almost everything possible has already been told and said.' - The Observer 'M. Jullian's book succeeds in keeping the reader's interest unflaggingly alive.' - The Economist
