I laughed when I say your blog url, Allie: I think "Let's get Wilde" was a creative touch, and it's a fitting name for such an eccentric personality as Oscar Wilde. I had heard of the "art for art's own sake" movement among the impressionists before but this was the first time I heard this term applied to literature, and I was immediately intrigued when you said Wilde was an aesthetic, as I had read an abridged version of The Portrait of Dorian Gray, and it definitely was a morality play; not just an aesthetic work. You gave a good explanation of the complexity behind Wilde's philosophy. Even though Wilde believed in aestheticism, he saw that some parts of the movement went too far. I think this shows how misleading terms like "romanticism", "realism", and "postmodern" are, because they try to package authors who may actually be caught between two literary movements. Perhaps that explains why Wilde, as you noted in your research paper, used paradox so much, because that reflected his own indecision with morality.
I did have one lingering question after reading your research paper: I would have liked a discussion of how Wilde uses literary techniques to create tone. After all, in a tale criticizing the excesses of aestheticism, Wilde would not want to come off as patronizing. I think you could discuss how Wilde manages to convey these lessons in an authentic matter. Foster wrote in How to Read Literature Like A Professor that the best political novels are those which are not overtly political, but the ones that convey the lesson at a deeper level. How does Wilde's voice appear in the novels? This, however, is a minor point. For the most part, your presentation was well thought out.
I laughed when I say your blog url, Allie: I think "Let's get Wilde" was a creative touch, and it's a fitting name for such an eccentric personality as Oscar Wilde. I had heard of the "art for art's own sake" movement among the impressionists before but this was the first time I heard this term applied to literature, and I was immediately intrigued when you said Wilde was an aesthetic, as I had read an abridged version of The Portrait of Dorian Gray, and it definitely was a morality play; not just an aesthetic work. You gave a good explanation of the complexity behind Wilde's philosophy. Even though Wilde believed in aestheticism, he saw that some parts of the movement went too far. I think this shows how misleading terms like "romanticism", "realism", and "postmodern" are, because they try to package authors who may actually be caught between two literary movements. Perhaps that explains why Wilde, as you noted in your research paper, used paradox so much, because that reflected his own indecision with morality.
ReplyDeleteI did have one lingering question after reading your research paper: I would have liked a discussion of how Wilde uses literary techniques to create tone. After all, in a tale criticizing the excesses of aestheticism, Wilde would not want to come off as patronizing. I think you could discuss how Wilde manages to convey these lessons in an authentic matter. Foster wrote in How to Read Literature Like A Professor that the best political novels are those which are not overtly political, but the ones that convey the lesson at a deeper level. How does Wilde's voice appear in the novels? This, however, is a minor point. For the most part, your presentation was well thought out.