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Oscar Wilde: Art and Morality
Stuart Mason
Book Overview:
This compendium work – skilfully assembled by the editor, Stuart Mason – ends with transcript of Wilde’s first appearance in the Old Bailey, when he was cross-examined on the alleged immorality of his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. The disastrous outcome of these trials provides an ironic conclusion to the earlier knockabout exchanges between Oscar and his reviewers. In these he is at his flamboyant best, revelling in the publicity he pretends to disdain. His brave performances in the dock did nothing, however, to save him from hard labour, the treadmill and complete physical and moral breakdown which the law found it necessary to inflict on him.
In contrast to the hacks and lawyers, two refreshingly open-minded Americans write perceptively about the novel, as does Walter Pater, the grand old man of Aestheticism.
This compendium work – skilfully assembled by the editor, Stuart Mason – ends with transcript of Wilde’s first appearance in the Old Bailey, when he was cross-examined on the alleged immorality of his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. The disastrous outcome of these trials provides an ironic conclusion to the earlier knockabout exchanges between Oscar and his reviewers. In these he is at his flamboyant best, revelling in the publicity he pretends to disdain. His brave performances in the dock did nothing, however, to save him from hard labour, the treadmill and complete physical and moral breakdown which the law found it necessary to inflict on him.
In contrast to the hacks and lawyers, two refreshingly open-minded Americans write perceptively about the novel, as does Walter Pater, the grand old man of Aestheticism.
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Heaven forbid that we should refuse to an author the supreme pleasure of realising the non-existent; or that we should judge the ". . . Read More
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Community Reviews
This rather hilarious collection of critics' reviews of A Portrait of Dorian Gray and Oscar Wilde's letters in return give me hope for the trolling troglodytes inhabiting the comments sections found on the internet today. Read it if you are ready to admit that we really aren't that different from pe
"The pleasure that one has in creating a work of art is a purely personal pleasure, and it is for the sake of this pleasure that one creates. The artist works with his eye on the object. Nothing else interests him. What people are likely to say does not even occur to him."
RIP Oscar Wilde. You would'
"To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim."
"There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written.That is all."
"The moral life of man forms part of the subject-matter of the artist, but the morality of art consists in the perfect use of an imperfect
Some contemporary discussion of "Dorian Gray," including its use in Wilde's first trial.
Interesting supplement to the novel.