Oscar Wilde Context

Literary Innovations in TIOBE

• Introduced the “dandy” character

  • Pays excessive attention to appearance, witty, epigramatic, a stand-in for Wilde

  • Critiques societal hypocrisy while appearing trivial and effete

  • Deeply moral

  • Genre shift: Victorian melodrama, witty social satire with moral and aesthetic commentary

Wilde’s Influence on TIOBE

• Satire of Victorian morality - used to mock societal norms, particularly love, courting and marriage

• Wit and epigrams - referred to as a master of wit

• Importance of self-image - Wilde’s preoccupation with aesthetics and the importance of self-image is reflected through Algernon

Oscar Wilde

• Born in 1854, Dublin

• Educated at Trinity College Dublin and Magdalene College Oxford

• Settled in London in 1878 and moved in elite literary circles

• Married Constance Lloyd in 1884 and had two children

• Homosexual and prosecuted for this, spending two years in prison

• Convicted the same year TIOBE was published

Aestheticism Movement

• Wilde championed art for art’s sake

• Art exists solely for beauty and it should not be burdened with the responsibility of teaching moral lessons