Oscar Wilde Essays (636 words) - Oscar Wilde, Anglo-Irish People

Oscar Wilde Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (1854-1900) was an Anglo-Irish dramatist, novelist, essayist, short-story writer, critic, and poet. He was part of the Decadence, a loosely affiliated coterie of writers and artists of the 1890s whose lives and works manifested a highly stylized, decorative manner, a fascination with morbidity and perversity, and an adherence to the doctrine "art for art's sake." After having a hard childhood, where he was dressed as a girl until the age of nine, he viewed life more critically than others. He often focused in on the upper class, and wrote of their absurdity, superficiality, and snobbery. Yet mainly, he wrote of what he felt at the time and what is around him. In The Importance of Being Earnest and A Woman of No Importance, it is evident that the environment, lifestyle, and events in the life of Oscar Wilde has influenced him in writing such one-sided critical satires, in which he reserved none of his strong opinions. When it came to satires, Wilde was the master of such literary art. "Wilde has accomplished such satire from the hallowed edifice of romantic literature certain standard characters, themes, and plot situations in order to build out of them a comedy that fuses contemporary social satire with a straight-faced taking-off of the usages of the popular fiction and drama of his time" (Poupard 418). In the beginning he tried to be a serious writer, but failed miserably. It was believed that as an entertainer he was more morally clearsighted (Bryfonski 504). Although he was full of strong idealism and human sympathy, his dissatisfaction with the society of the 1880's and 90's caused him to make highly personal and melodramatic attacks on issues which he possibly have never looked close enough to understand. Because of this, he was thought of as only presenting one side of life (498). He presented the upper English class with clear hostility, and stressed their corruption, shallowness, snobbery, and lack of genuine moral scruples (502). Wilde had a colorful and scandalous social life, and was even jailed for a while. He believed that people should be self-expressive vs. self-repressive, and therefore never held anything back. "What is termed sin is an essential element of progress . . . without it, the world would stagnate or grow old or become colorless" (Bloom 101). Wilde found criticism and self-consciousness necessary as sin. He believed that criticism plays a vital role in the creative process, and that criticism is an independent branch of literature with its own procedures (91). "Wilde was one of the first to see that the exaltation of the artist required a concomitant exaltation of the critic. If art was to have a special train, the critic must keep some seats reserved on it" (90). Wilde stated that: "If we are all insincere, masked, and lying, then the artist is prototype rather than exception. If all the sheep are black, then the artist cannot be blamed for not being white" (Bloom 102). Wilde believed that art should be made for the sake of art, and that art is permanent, and near immortality. "Only the artist can give to the beauty he sees a form that moves it towards its own ideal and preserves it from erosions of change" (Bryfonski 505). Wilde felt that since man and nature are in constant change, art was more ordered than life, more beautiful. The world of art is "more real than reality itself" (506). Yet Wilde had a word of warning: "All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril" (Schmidgall 149). What Wilde was trying to express is that art is so real, that if one dares to go beneath the surface, one may find things that he/she does not want to find. Wilde loved children, and loved the youth. Wilde proposed to speak for the young, with even excessive eagerness at times. Both The Importance of Being Earnest and A Woman of No Importance mainly evolves around the youthful characters.

Vangogh Essays - Vincent Van Gogh, Van Goghs Family In His Art

Vangogh Essays - Vincent Van Gogh, Van Goghs Family In His Art Vangogh The rapid evolution of a style characterized by canvases filled with swirling, bright colors depicting people and nature is the essence of Vincent Van Gogh's extremely prolific but tragically short career. Vincent Willem van Gogh was born on March 30, 1853, in Holland, son of a Dutch Protestant pastor and eldest of six children. His favorite brother Theo was four years younger. When Vincent was twelve to sixteen years old, he went to a boarding school. That next year he was sent to The Hague to work for an uncle who was an art dealer, but van Gogh was unsuited for a business career. Actually, his early interests were in literature and religion. Very dissatisfied with the way people made money and imbued with a strong sense of mission, he worked for a while as a lay preacher among proverty-stricken miners. Van Gogh represented the religious society that trained him in a poor coal-mining district in Belgium. Vincent took his work so seriously that he went without food and other necessities so he could give more to the poor. The missionary society objected to Vincent's behavior and fired him in 1879. Heartsick, van Gogh struggled to keep going socially and fin! ancially, yet he was always rejected by other people, and felt lost and forsaken. Then, in 1880, at age 27, he became obsessed with art. The intensity he had for religion, he now focused on art. His early drawings were crude but strong and full of feeling: "It is a hard and a difficult struggle to learn to draw well... I have worked like a slave ...." His first paintings had been still lifes and scenes of peasants at work. "That which fills my head and heart must be expressed in drawings and in pictures...I'm in a rage of work." In 1881, he moved to Etten. He very much liked pictures of peasant life and labor. Jean-Francois Millet was the first to paint this as a main theme and his works influenced van Gogh. His first paintings here were crude but improving. Van Gogh's progress was interrupted by an intense love for his widowed cousin Kee Vos. On her decisive rejection of him he pursued her to Amsterdam, only to suffer more humiliation. Anton Mauve, a leading member of the Hague school was a cousin of van Gogh's mother. This opportunity to be taught by him encouraged van Gogh to settle in Den Hague with Theo's support. When van Gogh left Den Hague in September 1883 for the northern fenland of Drenth, he did so with mixed feelings. He spent hours wandering the countryside, making sketches of the landscape, but began to feel isolated and concerned about the future. He had rented a little attic in a house but found it melancholy, and was depressed with the quality of his equipment. "Everything is too miserable, too insufficient, too dilapidated." Physically and mentally unable to cope with these conditions any longer, he left for his parents' new home in Nuenen in December 1883. Van Gogh had a phase in which he loved to paint birds and bird's nests. This phase did not last long. It only lasted until his father's death six months later. "The Family Bible" which he painted just before leaving his house for good, six months after his father's death in 1885, must have meant a great deal to him. Van Gogh had broken with Christianity when he was fired from the missionary which proved to be the most painful experience of his life, and one from which he never quite recovered. At Nuenen, van Gogh gave active physical toil a remarkable reality. It's impact went far beyond what the realist Gustave Corbet had achieved and beyond even the quasi-religious images of Jean-Francois Millet. He made a number of studies of peasant hands and heads before embarking on what would be his most important work at Nuenen. The pinnacle of his work in Holland was The Potato Eaters, a scene painted in April 1885 that shows the working day to be over. It was the last and most ambitious painting of his pre-Impressionist period, 1880-1885. When van Gogh painted the The Potato Eaters, he had not yet discovered

Causes of Renaissance Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Causes of Renaissance - Essay Example Apart from that, urbanization of cities and growth of commerce provided a suitable background for the rise of Renaissance. Before the twelve century, Italy was mostly rural with only several small urban centers. However, the established trade relationships with Byzantine and Muslims guaranteed the flow of money and goods that added to the development of commerce and, subsequently, to the wealth of the country as a whole. (Mantin 62-63)The following, in its turn, led to the growth of individual and self-governed cities-states with their own banking and political systems. Consequently, by the time the central and northern European cities were still ruled by monarchs, cities in Italy enjoyed high levels of autonomy that penetrated into various aspects of life. The atmosphere of prosperity and freedom was established and appeared to be quite conductive for the beginning of Renaissance. Furthermore, decentralization of power weakened the influence of church and its strict doctrines on people as well as contributed to the prosperity of people in Italy. The medieval society was totally subdued by the dominant rule of a church. It made impossible social development and did not allow any intellectual or economic advancement, viewing them as contradictory to Christian doctrines. The situation changed in the thirteen century when the power and prestige of the Pope were questioned. At that time, monarchs and common people started to challenge the overwhelming influence of the church with its constant proclamations of asceticism.