Oscar Wilde: Decadence and the Making of Modernism

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

Using the life and career of Oscar Wilde as our focus, we will examine the literary and cultural aesthetics of the fin de siècle. As an aspect of the Aesthetic and Decadent movement of the late 19th century, Wilde's work celebrates l'art pour l'art, even as it looks forward to modernism. The subversive subject matter of Wilde's art and his hedonistic lifestyle revolts against Victorian sensibilities and allows the reader to explore the celebration of beauty under the threat of decay. An accomplished Irish playwright, Wilde's oeuvre also includes poetry, essays, short stories, and his only novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. Wilde's ill-fated and obsessive relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas, "Bosie," led to three public trials—one civil trial where Wilde sued Bosie's father, the Marquess of Queensberry, for libel, and two criminal trials where Wilde was tried for "gross indecency," convicted in the second trial, and sent to HM Prison Reading with two years hard labor. In this class, we will read a range of Wilde's texts alongside authors of the Aesthetic and Decadent movement. We will investigate how the poetry, prose, and theatre of this period—with particular concentration on Wilde's texts and the theatre of his public trials— influenced twentieth artists around the Atlantic. We will also consider how the social and sexual transgressions of Wilde's life and his work impacted twentieth century attitudes towards performance, race, gender, and sexuality.