Wilde World: Aestheticism through Modernism

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

This course will treat Oscar Wilde extensively, looking to his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, several theatrical works, his short stories, and other writings before and after his period of imprisonment for “homosexual offenses.” In addition, we will explore his milieu in the decades surrounding his career, from productions by male and female writers and artists ranging from work by John Ruskin and Walter Pater through works of the Fin de Siècle to Modernism, such as Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway. Students will therefore come to see Wilde contextually in a maelstrom of Fin de Siècle and early 20th-Century developments, including women’s rights, the “Irish Question, and socialism/anarchism. Graded work will center on short papers and also regular reading journals (the latter of which are not graded individually but in the aggregate over the term.