Wilde's Intentions

Wilde's Intentions PDF Author: Lawrence Danson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780198186281
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 214

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Book Description
What were Wilde's intentions? They had always been suspect, from the time of Poems, when the charge was plagiarism, to his trials, when the charge was sodomy. In Intentions (1891), the book on which his claim as a theoretical critic chiefly lies, and in two related essays, `The Portrait of MrW. H.' and `The Soul of Man Under Socialism', Wilde's epigrammatic dazzle and paradoxical subversions both reveal and mask his designs upon fin-de-siecle society. In the first extended study of Wilde's criticism, Lawrence Danson examines these essays/dialogues/fictions (unsettling the categories wasone of their intentions) and assesses their achievement. Danson sets Wilde's criticism in context. He shows how the son of an Irish patriot sought to create a new ideal of English culture by elevating `lies' above history, levelling the distinction between artist and critic, and ending the sway of`nature' over liberated human desire.

Wilde's Intentions

Wilde's Intentions PDF Author: Lawrence Danson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780198186281
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 214

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Book Description
What were Wilde's intentions? They had always been suspect, from the time of Poems, when the charge was plagiarism, to his trials, when the charge was sodomy. In Intentions (1891), the book on which his claim as a theoretical critic chiefly lies, and in two related essays, `The Portrait of MrW. H.' and `The Soul of Man Under Socialism', Wilde's epigrammatic dazzle and paradoxical subversions both reveal and mask his designs upon fin-de-siecle society. In the first extended study of Wilde's criticism, Lawrence Danson examines these essays/dialogues/fictions (unsettling the categories wasone of their intentions) and assesses their achievement. Danson sets Wilde's criticism in context. He shows how the son of an Irish patriot sought to create a new ideal of English culture by elevating `lies' above history, levelling the distinction between artist and critic, and ending the sway of`nature' over liberated human desire.

Intentions

Intentions PDF Author: Oscar Wilde
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Art critics
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description


Intentions

Intentions PDF Author: Oscar Wilde
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
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.

The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Intentions

The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Intentions PDF Author: Oscar Wilde
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 346

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Book Description


Oscar Wilde in the 1990s

Oscar Wilde in the 1990s PDF Author: Melissa Knox
Publisher: Camden House
ISBN: 9781571130426
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
An examination of the most significant literary criticism on Wilde at the turn of the century. In 1891, Oscar Wilde defined 'the highest criticism' as 'the record of one's own soul, and insisted that only by 'intensifying his own personality' could the critic interpret the personality and work of others. This book exploreswhat Wilde meant by that statement, arguing that it provides the best standard for judging literary criticism about Wilde a century after his death. Melissa Knox examines a range of Wilde criticism in English -- including the work of Lawrence Danson, Michael Patrick Gillespie, Ed Cohen, and Julia Prewitt Brown. Applying Wilde's standards to his critics, Knox discovers that the best of them take to heart Wilde's idea of the aim of criticism -- 'to see theobject as in itself it really is not.' By this, Wilde appreciates Walter Pater's profound observation that everyone sees through a 'thick wall of personality' and that, therefore, objectivity as conceived by Matthew Arnold does not exist. Admiring Pater, Wilde became a prophet for Freud, his exact contemporary. Their intellectual sympathies, made obvious in Knox's exegesis, help to make the case for Wilde as a modern, not a Victorian. Melissa Knox's book Oscar Wilde: A Long and Lovely Suicide was published in 1994. She teaches at the University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany.

Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde PDF Author: Karl Beckson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134722850
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 454

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Book Description
This set comprises 40 volumes covering 19th and 20th century European and American authors. These volumes will be available as a complete set, mini boxed sets (by theme) or as individual volumes. This second set compliments the first 68 volume set of Critical Heritage published by Routledge in October 1995.

Oscar Wilde, Wilfred Owen, and Male Desire

Oscar Wilde, Wilfred Owen, and Male Desire PDF Author: James Campbell
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137550643
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 214

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Book Description
This book reads Oscar Wilde as a queer theorist and Wilfred Owen as his symbolic son. It centers on the concept of 'male procreation', or the generation of new ideas through an erotic but non-physical connection between two men, and it sees Owen as both a product and a continuation of this Wildean tradition.

Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde PDF Author: Norbert Kohl
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521176538
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 454

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Book Description
Professor Kohl's aim is to gain fresh insight into his literary and critical Ĺ“uvre of Oscar Wilde. He analyses each of his works on the basis of a textually oriented interpretation, taking equal account of the biographical and intellectual contexts through the use of contradictions that Wilde show as individualism and convention.

Wilde Writings

Wilde Writings PDF Author: William Andrews Clark Memorial Library
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 9780802035325
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 366

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Book Description
Featuring thirteen original essays that examine Wilde's achievements as an aesthete, critic, dramatist, novelist, and poet, this provocative and ground-breaking volume ushers the field of Oscar Wilde studies into the twenty-first century.

Complete Writings of Oscar Wilde: Intentions. The soul of man under socialism

Complete Writings of Oscar Wilde: Intentions. The soul of man under socialism PDF Author: Oscar Wilde
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 350

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Book Description