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This book elucidates how the late Victorian author, playwright and artist Oscar Wilde both mirrors and subverts the artificial gender roles of Victorian society in Lady Windermere’s Fan, An Ideal Husband and The Importance of Being Earnest, eventually introducing morally tangled definitions of womanhood and manhood. Apart from the common literature concerning Wilde's homosexual identity, it examines the invalidation of morality through a specific reading of the two established genders, and hence, brings in a particular dimension. Wilde destroys all moral balances while creating a new perception where no strict borders exist to separate the proper gender traits from the improper. The book is a reference source for undergraduate and graduate students, academics, and anyone interested in Wildean studies and the moral codes of Victorian society.
This book elucidates how the late Victorian author, playwright and artist Oscar Wilde both mirrors and subverts the artificial gender roles of Victorian society in Lady Windermere's Fan, An Ideal Husband and The Importance of Being Earnest, eventually introducing morally tangled definitions of womanhood and manhood. Apart from the common literature concerning Wilde's homosexual identity, it examines the invalidation of morality through a specific reading of the two established genders, and hence, brings in a particular dimension. Wilde destroys all moral balances while creating a new perception where no strict borders exist to separate the proper gender traits from the improper. The book is a reference source for undergraduate and graduate students, academics, and anyone interested in Wildean studies and the moral codes of Victorian society.
Written by a leading expert on the Puritans, this brief, informative volume offers a wealth of background on this key religious movement. This book traces the shaping, triumph, and decline of the Puritan world, while also examining the role of religion in the shaping of American society and the role of the Puritan legacy in American history. Francis J. Bremer discusses the rise of Puritanism in the English Reformation, the struggle of the reformers to purge what they viewed as the corruptions of Roman Catholicism from the Elizabethan church, and the struggle with the Stuart monarchs that led to a brief Puritan triumph under Oliver Cromwell. It also examines the effort of Puritans who left England to establish a godly kingdom in America. Bremer examines puritan theology, views on family and community, their beliefs about the proper relationship between religion and public life, the limits of toleration, the balance between individual rights and one's obligation to others, and the extent to which public character should be shaped by private religious belief. About the Series: Combining authority with wit, accessibility, and style, Very Short Introductions offer an introduction to some of life's most interesting topics. Written by experts for the newcomer, they demonstrate the finest contemporary thinking about the central problems and issues in hundreds of key topics, from philosophy to Freud, quantum theory to Islam.
A radical re-examination of Oscar Wilde's plays, Revising Wilde challenges long-established views of the writer as a dilettante and dandy, revealing him instead as a serious philosopher and social critic who used his plays to subvert the traditional values of Victorian literature and society. By tracing Wilde's painstaking revisions and redraftings of his plays, Sos Eltis uncovers themes subsequently concealed in successive versions which demonstrate that Wilde was in fact an anarchist, a socialist, and a feminist. Wilde borrowed plots and incidents from numerous contemporary French and English plays, but he then subtly rewrote his plagiarized material in order to mock the very conventions he imitated. By analysing previously unconsidered manuscript drafts, and comparing the finished plays with their sources, Eltis displays a surprising depth and complexity to Wilde's work. The little-known early play, Vera; or, The Nihilists is revealed as a politically radical drama, the society plays are shown to challenge Victorian sexual and social mores, and The Importance of Being Earnest is interpreted as an anarchic farce, which reflects the Utopian vision of Wilde's political essay, 'The Soul of Man under Socialism'. Taking into account the most recent scholarship and criticism, this accessible study will be of interest to Wilde specialists and enthusiasts alike.
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Essay from the year 2019 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1,7, University of Amsterdam, language: English, abstract: Oscar Wilde's plays are characterized by satirical wit that exposes and derides the norms, values and believes of Victorian society. Although it could be argued that his comedies were mainly designed to amuse the aristocratic audience, his characters challenge the dominate gender roles in a revolutionary way. In her article "Gender roles in the 19th century," Kathryn Hughes explains, that "during the Victorian period men and women's roles became more sharply defined than at any time in history." It can be said that the clear division of two gender roles is created by a social system and the prevailing cultural beliefs of a society.
This book reads Oscar Wilde's literary texts in relation to his open support for revolutionaries, along with his expressions of solidarity with Irish republicans, anarchists, workers and migrants.
The present collection of essays is the outcome of the Oscar Wilde conference held at the Technical University of Dresden, 31 August - 3 September 2000. The papers cover a wide range of historical and comparative aspects: they look into the status of Wilde as poet, dramatist, essayist and intellectual during his own times as well as investigate the meaning of his work for subsequent writers and critics, thus, giving an outline of the Wildean history of literary reception, intellectual discourse and media transformation. Intellectually brilliant and challenging, Oscar Wilde had been a favourite of the late Victorians, performing the roles of the dandy and the poet of art for art's sake. However, due to his questioning of prevalent moral double standards and his insistence on the autonomy of art, he was indicted for gross indecencies, convicted, and sent to prison. Instead of being ostracised, he became a source of inspiration for writers and artists on the British isles as well as on the European continent. The papers in this volume explore such topics as Wilde's concepts of socialism and aestheticism, his fashioning of the femme fatale and of the dandy, his use of fashion and of simulation, his impact on modernism and postmodernism as well as on genres such as crime writing and fictional biography, and the influence of Wilde on writers such as James Joyce, W.B. Yeats, Joe Orton, Peter Ackroyd, Tom Stoppard, David Hare and Mark Ravenhill. Other papers focus on the reception of Wilde in Russia, former Yugoslavia, Hungary and Germany as well as on cinematic and Internet representations of Wilde. Critical and creative responses vary from the general to the specific - from traditional assessments to analyses of the arts of camp, parody, and pastiche; thus, indicative of the (sub)cultural appropriation of 'Saint Oscar' (Terry Eagleton).
Concise and illuminating articles explore Oscar Wilde's life and work in the context of the turbulent landscape of his time.