BÀI GIẢNG DẠNG VĂN BẢN (SCRIPT)
Môn học: Văn học Anh
Unit 3: Tác giả Oscar Wilde
OSCAR WILDE (1854 - 1900)
Hello everyone,
Welcome to Unit 3 of the British Literature online course. Today we would like to
introduce you to another great figure of British Literature who has interested literature
lovers over generations so much with his eventful personal life as much as his work. The
great man we are going to present is Oscar Wilde, an Irish playwright, novelist, poet,
and author of short stories.
Let’s start with his childhood and education.
EDUCATION
• The full name of Oscar Wilde is Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde.
• Oscar Wilde was born on 16 October 1854 and died on 30 November 1900.
• Until he was nine, Oscar Wilde was educated at home.
• From 1864 to 1871, Oscar Wilde attended Portora Royal School in Enniskillen,
County Fermanagh.
• From 1871 to 1874, Oscar Wilde studied classics that deal with Ancient Rome,
Ancient Greece, the works of ancient Greek and Latin writers and philosophers, as
a royal scholarship awardee at Trinity College, Dublin.
At Trinity, Wilde established himself as an outstanding student.
• From 1874 to 1878, Oscar Wilde continued studying classics at Magdalen
College at the University of Oxford.
While at Magdalen College, Wilde became associated with the emerging
philosophy of aestheticism and particularly well known for his role in
the aesthetic and decadent movements.
As we have said, Oscar Wilde’s personal life was eventful. The starting point of his
eventful personal life was his marriage that was followed by his officially recorded love
affairs with two younger men.
MARRIAGE AND LOVE
• In 1881, Oscar Wilde was introduced to Constance Lloyd and then they married in
1884 in London. However, just two years later, their marriage had begun to
unravel when they already had two sons and Oscar Wilde engaged in homosexual
relationship with Robert Baldwin Ross, his first documented male lover, in 1886.
• From 25 May 1895 to 18 May 1897 Wilde was imprisoned due to his stormy affair
with Lord Alfred Douglas, a spoiled, reckless, insolent and extravagant young
man.
Anyway, we would like you to look at this great author’s career now before we talk more
about the further information of his personal life that was associated with his last works.
CAREER
• As a spokesman for aestheticism, Oscar Wilde tried his hand at various literary
activities in London and Paris to be a journalist, editor, poet, playwright, and
writer. He also traveled to the United States to deliver lectures on interior design
to transpose aestheticism into daily life.
• With his imprisonment, although Wilde's health had suffered greatly from the
harshness and diet of prison, he had a feeling of spiritual renewal. During his last
year in prison, he wrote De Profundis that was posthumously published in 1905.
This is a long letter which discusses his spiritual journey through his trials,
forming a dark counterpoint to his earlier philosophy of pleasure.
• On 19 May 1897 Wilde was released from prison . He sailed immediately that
evening for France and never returned to the UK. In France, he wrote his last
work, The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898), a long poem commemorating the harsh
rhythms of prison life.
It’s relevant now to get back to Wilde’s personal life with the information that was
associated with the right to the posthumous publication of his works after that.
DEATH AND LAST LOVE
• On 30 November 1900 Wilde died of meningitis.
• Since Oscar Wilde did retain a lifelong interest in Catholic teachings and beliefs
that we literature learners now find imprinted in a number of his works, before
death Wilde requested comfort, peace, courage, and forgiveness of sins with the
last rites and prayers so that he would convert to Catholic Church and would be
received into Heaven to the Will of God.
With great difficulty, Canadian journalist Robert Ross who was Oscar Wilde’s
first-and-last lover managed to invite Father Cuthbert Dunne, a Catholic priest, to
arrive immediately at the bedside of the dying man. When Oscar Wilde was
roused from a semi-unconscious condition, he gave signs of being inwardly
conscious and tried to say all the prayers through after Fr Cuthbert Dunne.
• Wilde was initially buried in the Cimetière de Bagneux outside Paris. Nine years
later, in 1909, his remains were disinterred and transferred to Père Lachaise
Cemetery inside the city. As a devoted friend, a loyal lover, and the only literary
executor of Oscar Wilde, Canadian journalist Robert Ross commissioned Sir
Jacob Epstein to design Oscar Wilde’s tomb then with a small compartment
reserved for his own ashes later.
• In 1950, on the 50th anniversary of Wilde's death, Ross's ashes were placed into
Wilde's tomb as requested so that Robert Ross would be publicly with his erratic
genius lover Oscar Wilde forever with his loyalty and openness of homosexuality
since his early youth.
Despite the scandalous events in his life, Oscar Wilde was a very popular author of
British literature.
POPULARITY
• By his imprisonment in 1895, Wilde had already earned the height of his fame
with noticeable literary success.
• Although he suffered from poverty and misery in the last three years of his life
after the imprisonment, Oscar Wilde has resumed his popularity ever since his
death.
• In 1987 Richard Ellmann wrote his biography Oscar Wilde, for which he
posthumously won a National (USA) Book Critics Circle Award in 1988 and
a Pulitzer Prize in 1989. The book was the basis for the 1997 film Wilde, directed
by Brian Gilbert and starring Stephen Fry as the title character. The film has been
uploaded onto YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhOjxZ8LTec)
• English literature lovers have expressed so much admiration when they visit Oscar
Wilde and Robert Ross’s tomb. In 2011, the tomb was cleaned of the many
lipstick marks left there by admirers and a glass barrier was installed to prevent
further marks or damage.
• In 2014 Wilde was one of the inaugural honorees in the Rainbow Honor Walk,
a walk of fame in San Francisco's Castro neighbourhood noting LGBTQ people
who have "made significant contributions in their fields."
• In 2017, Wilde was among an estimated 50,000 men who were pardoned for
homosexual acts that were no longer considered offences under the Policing and
Crime Act 2017.
• As can be seen worldwide, Wilde’s works have been globally studied with high
interest and special love for their meaningful messages of humanity.
What are the notable works out of Oscar Wilde’s publications?
NOTABLE WORKS
Oscar Wilde wrote essays, short stories, poems, plays, and only one novel. We have a list
here of his works.
Essays
• The Decay of Lying (1889)
• Pen, Pencil and Poison (1889)
• The Soul of Man under Socialism (1891)
• Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young (1894)
• A Few Maxims for The Instruction of The Over-Educated (1894)
Novel
• The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891)
Stories
• "The Portrait of Mr. W. H." (1889)
• The Happy Prince and Other Tales (1888, a collection of fairy tales) consisting of:
o "The Happy Prince"
o "The Nightingale and the Rose"
o "The Selfish Giant"
o "The Devoted Friend"
o "The Remarkable Rocket"
• A House of Pomegranates (1891, fairy tales)
• Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories (1891)
Poems
• Ravenna (1878)
• Poems (1881)
• The Sphinx (1894)
• Poems in Prose (1894)
• The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898)
Plays
• Vera; or, The Nihilists (1880)
• The Duchess of Padua (1883)
• Lady Windermere's Fan (1892)
• A Woman of No Importance (1893)
• Salomé (French version) (1893, first performed in Paris 1896)
• Salomé (1894)
• An Ideal Husband (1895)
• The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)
Posthumous works
• De Profundis (1905, 1908, 1949, 1962)
• The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898)
Among his works, Wilde’s only novel The Picture of Dorian Gray published in 1891 and
the play The Importance of Being Earnest first performed in 1895 are the most
noticeable. Besides, the fairy tales The Nightingale and the Rose together with The
Happy Prince in the collection The Happy Prince and Other Tales published in 1888
have been widely read and discussed in schools around the world.
We have introduced you to Oscar Wilde, a great author who is said to have interested
literature lovers around the world with his eventful personal life as much as his
remarkable contribution to British literature. We hope you enjoy the knowledge we have
presented with no homophobia and no bias from narrow-mindedness and with the
inclusive culture of our modern age.
THE END
