Esma Alver

07-11-912
 Many Victorians passionately believed that literature
and art fulfilled important ethical roles
 Literature contributed models of proper behaviour:
 -allowed people to analyse the situations
 -spur people to action in the real world

 Aesthetes claimed that there is no space for morality in

art
 They thought that it is pursuit of beauty and taste as
well as beauty as a standard of living
 ”Art for art’s sake” became the motto of aesthetics,
later Decadents’.
 Art should be experienced under the title of “form”
instead of “morality”
 Aestheticism dislocated the keystone values of
mainstream Victorian culture
 Oscar Wilde was a leader of the Aesthetic Movement
following the light of “Art for art’s sake” thought.
 By the 1890s, another term became associated with
this focus on ‘art for art’s sake’.
 It appeared in France first, then spread over the
European countries
 Fin de siècle – means end of the century; A period of
degeneration, but at the same time a period of hope
for new beginnings
 “falling away” or decline / degeneration of cultures and
societies
 Decadents reflected the decay of Victorian values
 Decadence alarmed those, who were fond of
traditional form and values, and they saw the
decadents as cultural and moral threats
 degeneration and dissident sexual desires
 “the artist’s moral and spiritual depravity”
 Wilde was a leader of these two movements, with
other English, French and much more writers
 “Art should not be influenced by politics, science, or
morality, but should be an expression of whatever it
wished to be. Art should not merely look to life or
nature for inspiration, for art that too closely imitates
life is a failure.”
 Also he saw the realism as a “complete failure”
 “Art is a superior to life and that the one obligation was
to transform life into art – to be as ‘artificial’ as
possible”
 Wilde’s play is evaluated as a humorous masterpiece in
the manner of creativeness and criticism of social
seriousness
 Wild is a social satirist, whereas he is not seriously
criticising the society in the play, but makes them
laugh at themselves
 He mirrors their ridiculous manners and seriousness,
their fight of being earnest
 A pleasure-seeker
 Algernon worries about absence of cucumber
sandwiches more than being penniless, social
dissimulations and class discriminations
 Algernon’s vagabondage is not merely laziness, but
also the product of someone, who has cultivated an
esteemed sense of aesthetic uselessness
 Marriage institute is criticised, it’s futility is
emphasised in many sections
 «Divorces are made in heaven» - Algernon
 He is completely amoral
“The books that the world calls immoral are
books that show the world its own shame.”

― Oscar Wilde