Chapter I. The life of oscar wilde

CONTENT

INTRODUCTION 2
CHAPTER I. THE LIFE OF OSCAR WILDE. 1.1. Portrait on Oscar Wilde. 5
1.2. O.Wilde and English literature 13
CHAPTER II. CONTRIBUTIONS OF O. WILDE 15
2.1 Popular works and characters of O. Wilde 15
2.2. Main topics and objectives of the writer 24
CONCLUSION 29
GLOSSARY 31
REFERENCES 33

INTRODUCTION

"What bothers you if you ask me?" If you ask me, I will answer that it is the education and upbringing of our children.
Sh.Mirziyoyev¹
The present book is an updated version of course work, “The Role of the
Reader in Oscar Wilde’s Narrative and Dramatic Works”, for which I was awarded.
In celebration of the 160th anniversary of Oscar Wilde’s birth, This study, which is entitled "The Role of the Reader in Oscar Wilde's Narrative and Dramatic Works", constitutes a critical approach to Oscar Wilde's creative writings from the hypothesis that they called upon the active participation of the reader in the construction of their meaning.
The first chapter of this study, "The Critical Reception of Oscar Wilde and his Works", is focused on the analysis of the myth of Wilde. Oscar Wilde has constantly been an object of critical attention in academic and non-academic circles for more than a century, but paradoxically little has been said about his literary achievements. The explanation for this is that Oscar Wilde has been considered to be a controversial personality rather than a literary writer. In the first section of this chapter I shall explore the origins and popularisation of the legend around Wilde in order to show that Wilde created and contributed to propagate his own myth as a superficial dilettante in order to promote himself and to publicise his works. My intention is to provide an account of the formation of legend around Wilde which will reveal him as an early instance of the modern type of literary writer.
The remainder of this chapter is devoted to examine the directions which have been established in Wildean research, the traditional as well as the innovative ones. During decades many critics regarded him as little more than a social entertainer whose provocative gestures and witticisms in his public life as well as in his literature were not to be taken seriously, and this served to propagate the existing "myth" of Wilde as a flamboyant poseur which Wilde himself had originally helped to create; however, modern scholars have gradually discovered that beneath Wilde's apparent superficiality there can be found a serious philosophy of art and a sharp criticism of the moral standards of society, which has led to a revaluation of Wilde and his writings in recent years. The overall view of the different positions adopted in the exploration of Wilde's life and works will provide the interdisciplinary framework within which I shall integrate my analysis. Moreover, the results obtained after the discussion of the critical reception of Wilde will serve to justify the need of the present study.
In the second chapter, "Methodological Discussion", I determine the scientific basis of this investigation as well as the procedures which will be followed in this study. I shall explain the reasons why I have adopted reader-oriented criticism as a methodological framework for my study. I shall indicate that there are two general movements in reader-oriented criticism, namely, "Reader-response Theory" and "Reception Theory" and I shall revise the various critical tendencies within each of them. Then I shall establish a typology of the reader under which I shall gather all the critical proposals of reader-response theorists and reception theorists which I shall analyse in this chapter.
I believe that the methodology to be applied into a study should be determined by the corpus which is the object of analysis. Thus, having discussed the different trends within reader-oriented criticism, I have related them to Wilde's critical theory on the reader with the aim of justifying the adequacy of the methodological constructs for my analysis of the role of the reader in Wilde's creative works in the light of his literary criticism.