Rangs among the greatest playwright of Victorian era together with George Bernard Shaw they represent the top the Victorian drama.(He is the best repreesantive of Victorian era in English literature).
Oscar Wilde was born in Ireland in Dublin.He went to university at Trinity College Dublin and Oxford and then moved to London. His life was full of scandal. He was excentric
Personality wearing long hair and extravagant clothes.
Literary carrer:
He became the master of situation comedy, his comedies are full of brilliant easy going dialogues. He used irony and satyre to crytisize teh moral and life in English Middle Ages. His best comedies are:
Lady Windermere˘s Fan
The Importance of being Earnest
He also wrote series drama Salome (daughter of Herodias). He inspired from Bible. Slovak poet Hviezdoslav was inspired in this to write Herodes and Herodias.
Apart from drama he also wrote an excellent collection of fairy tales called
Happy Prince and other stories. The Nightingale and the Rose
Happy Prince
He is the author of only one novel called The Picture of Dorian Gray. By writting this book he was inspired by French literature (Stendhal).
The Picture of Dorian Gray is sociological expressing the excentric ideas of its author and dealing with a role of an artist in a society. The idea: The youth is the important thing in the world. All characters of the novel:
Dorian Gray
-beauty(physical appearance)
-young, handsome, egoistic, cruel man
-self-assured, vain, falls person, mental
-he was very negative character
Basil Hayward
-famous and succesful painter
Lord Henry Wotton
-friend of Dorian Gray
Sibil Vane
-beautiful, young actress
-girlfriend of Dorian Gray
Sibil˘s brother
-sailor
It has phylosophycal ideas:
1.To stay young forever but for the point of time it is impossible.
2.It˘s based on the great contrast of beauty and evil beautiful, handsome outside and ugly
inside.
End:
It˘s not happyend. Evel doesn˘t win because Dorian Gray dead at the end.