Reading and Writing Skills for Students of Literature in English: The Victorian Period

1
Reading and Writing Skills for Students of
Literature in English The Victorian Period

• Enric Monforte
• Jacqueline Hurtley
• Bill Phillips

2
Oscar Wilde

• The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)

3
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
http//www.commons.wikimedia.org
https//sisenglish.wikispaces.com
4
Lady Jane Francesca Wilde (Jane Elgee, 1821-1896)

• 
  Speranza

http//www.findagrave.com
5
William Robert Wilde
http//www.mr-oscar-wilde.de
6
On 29 May 1884, Wilde married Constance
Lloyd.They had two sons, Cyril (1885) and
Vyvyan (1886). The photo shows Wildes wifeand
his son Cyril in 1889.
http//www.odysseetheater.com
7
John Ruskin (1819-1900), by John Everett Millais
http//www.bestpriceart.com
8
http//www.gardenvisit.com/assets/madge/ruskin/600
x/ruskin_600x.jpg
9
Walter Pater (1839-1894) Art for arts sake
http//www.nndb.com/people/622/000096334/
10
Lord Alfred Douglas
http//www.turgingsomedrama.com
11
Wilde and Douglas at Oxford (1893)
http//evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/osca
r_wilde.htm
12
Homosexuality

• I am the love that dare not speak its name.
• Lord Alfred Douglas, Two Loves (1894)

13
Envelope and note that were basis of libel suit
The trials of Oscar Wilde (1895)
http//www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/w
ilde/images.html
14
Poster announcing auction of Wildes possessions
http//www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/w
ilde/images.html
15
Reading
"In Reading gaol by Reading townThere is a pit
of shame,And in it lies a wretched manEaten by
teeth of flame,In burning winding-sheet he
lies,And his grave has got no name." Oscar
Wilde, The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898)
16
The Ballad of Reading Gaol

• And all men kill the thing they love,
• By all let this be heard,
• Some do it with a bitter look,
• Some with a flattering word,
• The coward does it with a kiss,
• The brave man with a sword!

17
Wilde with Lord Alfred Douglas, Naples (1897)
18
Wildes works

• The Happy Prince and Other Tales (1888)
• The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890)
• Lord Arthur Savilles Crime and Other Stories
  (1891)
• Lady Windermeres Fan (1892)
• Salomé (1893)
• A Woman of No Importance (1893)
• An Ideal Husband (1895)
• The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)
• The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898)
• De Profundis (1905)

19
The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890)Directed
byAlbert Lewin(1945)
http//www.moviemorlocks.com
20
The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)
http//www.bl.uk
Manuscript
21
The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)
Original production playbill
http//www.vam.ac.uk/images/image/58876-large.jpg
22
The Importance of Being Earnest at the St.
Jamess Theatre .
http//www.vam.ac.uk
Identity in Victorian society
http//www.josephhaworth.com

23
Dandyism
Dandy according to OED One who studies above
everything to dress elegantly and fashionably a
beau, fop, exquisite.
http//www.knowledgerush.com/wiki_image/e/ec/Dandi
es.jpg
http//cedarlounge.wordpress.com
24
Dandyism
25
The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)
Bunbury and Victorian hypocrisy
Give me back my cigarette case. Allan
Aynesworth as Algernon and George Alexander as
Jack (1895) Photograph by Alfred Ellis
http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_James's_Theatre
26
The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)
A middle-class British Victorian family takes
tea
http//www.heardfamilyhistory.org.uk/family20secr
ets.htm
27
The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)
http//www.lancashiregallery.co.uk/mediac/400_0/me
dia/DSCF3667.jpg
The countryside Woolton Wood
The city Central London, Fleet Street around
1895
28
The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)
Jennifer Scott-Malden as Gwendolen Fairfax,
Geoffrey Church as Jack Worthing and Charles
Edwards as Algernon Moncrieff, English
Touring Theatre (1995)
http//www.ett.org.uk
29
The Importance of Being Earnest (Dir. Oliver
Parker, 2002)
Judi Dench as Lady Bracknell impersonating
Victorian society
30
De Profundis (1905)
. . . Suffering is one very long moment. We
cannot divide it by seasons. We can only record
its moods, and chronicle their return. With us
time itself does not progress. It revolves. It
seems to circle round one centre of pain.
31
Père Lachaise Cemetery, Paris
http//farm3.static.flickr.com/2197/2224470530_9a8
8658281.jpg?v0
http//www.ovejaselectricas.es/?p30
32
A Conversation with Oscar Wilde, London
http//commons.wikimedia.org