Prose contexts

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  • Created by: LilyIM
  • Created on: 18-06-17 22:14

The picture of Dorian Gray context

Oscar Wilde

  • Born 1854 Dublin
  • Born when Ireland was still recovering from the great famine
  • Father was a notable surgeon, the mother wrote nationalistic poetry and journalism.
  • Flamboyant and eccentric couple notated literary and political circle.  
  • Wilde went to Oxford in 1874
  • He loved Catholic ritual all his life but there were doctrines he could not accept and there were social implications he preferred not to endure in the religiously prejudice England. 
  • An extrovert at Oxford marketed himself as an exponent of aesthetics. 
  • Contacts in the art world, including many actresses such as Ellen Terry.
  • Lectured about Aesthetics all across America.
  • Was in Paris where he was introduced to the decadent movement. 
  • Adopted the belief criticism was an art form itself. 
  • Married Constance Lloyd, they shared an enthusiasm for the suffragette movement (she was part of the Rational Dress Society, against corsets).
  • Wrote for Women's world, commissions female emancipation articles. 
  • 1886 met first male lover Robert Ross. 
  • Had a creative burst of Energy.
  • Dorian Gray red appeared in the 1890 July US edition of Lippincott's. 
  • Controversial England, withdrawn from some newsstands. 
  • Father died and the family was seriously in debt. 
  • Wilde wrote a few plays.
  • E.g. 'A women of no importance' had a witty aristocratic circle like Dorian Gray, even recycling some of the jokes from it. The Importance of being earnest. 
  • Fell in Love with 'Bosie' (Lord Alfred Douglas) he was manipulative and unstable, preventing Wilde from working. 
  • Bosie and Wilde had affairs with other men whilst together. But it was Bosie's carelessness that doomed Wilde. 
  • Wilde was blackmailed when someone found a love note in a cast-off suit of Bosie's.
  • Wilde resolved it quickly. 
  • Wilde tried to break with him, but Queensberry's son committed suicide 1894.
  • Maddened by grief, Queensberry made a scapegoat of Wilde, sending an insulting card to Wilde's club.
  • Wilde was ambivalent about suing for libel. But Dumb *** Bosie wanted his father in the docks.
  • Queensbury pleaded justification. His detectives located several of Wilde's lovers so Bosie did not have to appear in court. 
  • Wilde went to jail for 2 years, with hard labour. 
  • Wilde wandered Europe.
  • Wilde died of Cerebral Meningitis.

Historical Background

Wealth and Dissidence

  • Wilde's era was named the Fin de Siecle, meaning the end of a century.
  • For the British Empire, it had been an era of great stability, symbolised by the Great Exhibition of '1851'. 
  • USA/Germany becoming powerful rivals. 
  • E.g. many wanted to marry rich Americans such as Lord Henry's brother.
  • Wealth gap grew political unrest, e.g. Bloody Sunday m***acre. 
  • Ugly legacy, colonialism, Ireland suffered. Also, Opium wars, went to war with China to force them to import opium.  Only a handful of 'opium houses' such as in Dorian Gray. Growing intolerance of smoking it recreationally. 

New sciences 

  • Age of invention: the telephone, the wireless telegraph, electric light etc. 
  • Darwin's origins of species 1859.
  • the public anxiety that evolution could regress. People become more ape-like (Jack the Ripper…

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