Oscar Wilde

Materie:	Appunti
Categoria:	Lingue
Download:	171
Data:	16.05.2000
Numero di pagine:	2
Formato di file:	.doc (Microsoft Word)

Oscar Wilde lived in the second half of the nineteenth century, a period in which England enjoyed several decades of great wealth and power. These decades marked the triumph of the industrial middle-classes with their confidence in progress, their belief in the theory of laissez-faire in economics and utilitarianism in philosophy, their generic philantropism and vague sentimentalism, their morality observant of exterior forms and conventions.
This is what is called the “Victorian compromise”, that is to say the attitude of a large section of English society that considered industrial development only as a source of prosperity and progress and pretended not to see the many social problems raised by it.
It is the social context in which one of the most controversial writers, Oscar Wilde, lived.
Wilde’s provoking attitudes, his witticism and love for paradox have often induced very contradictory judgements on his works. Even when they are praised, they are often praised for their humour and witticism but at the same time charged with superficiality. His humour is often considered humour for humour’s sake without any underlying target or message. But it is precisely through his use of language and his tone that Wilde conveys his message. He has an ironic attitude to all aspects of life in opposition to Victorian solemnity which for him is a kind of false seriousness which means hypocrisy. Instead of denouncing or discussing he teases. He uses wit instead of moralising but beneath the apparent superficiality of the tone he conveys his satirical outlook on social aspects. Love, marriage, institutions, the class system and hypocrisy are some of the targets of his witty remarks. He never makes explicit comments but creates comic situation from which criticism can be derived. This is particularly evident n his comedies where verbal play can be used at its best, but also in his short story where satire on social aspects comes out of comic situation. An example can be his work “Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime”. In this story the author wanted to mock at the imperturbability, the lack of humour and the arrogance of the ruling class.