Chapter I. The life of oscar wilde

The aim of the work is to analyze different approaches to the definition of The literary works of O. Wilde.
The object of the work is the wealth of The literary works of O. Wilde, ambiguity of its vocabulary and the most common rules of The literary works of O.
Wilde.
The methods of the work. While investigating we have widely used typological and morphological methods.
The theoretical value of the work is that theoretical positions of this paper can be used in compiling poems, books, in scientific works besides that they may be used in delivering lectures on Lexicology, Phraseology and Stylistics. The practical value of the work is that the practical results and conclusions can be used in the seminars on literature.
The work contains: introduction, two chapter, conclusion, glossary and bibliography.

CHAPTER I. THE LIFE OF OSCAR WILDE. 1.1. Portrait on Oscar Wilde.

Wilde was born into a Protestant Anglo-Irish family, at 21 Westland Row, Dublin, to Sir William Wilde and his wife Jane. Jane was a successful writer and an Irish nationalist, known also as 'Speranza', while Sir William was Ireland's leading ear and eye surgeon, and wrote books on archaeology and folklore². He was a renowned philanthropist, and his dispensary for the care of the city's poor, situated in Lincoln Place at the rear of Trinity College, Dublin was the forerunner of the Dublin Eye and Ear Hospital, now located at Adelaide Road.
In June 1855, the family moved to 1 Merrion Square, a fashionable residential area. Here, Lady Wilde held a regular Saturday afternoon salon with guests including such figures as Sheridan le Fanu, Samuel Lever, George Petrie, Isaac Butt and Samuel Ferguson. Oscar was educated at home up to the age of nine. He attended Portora Royal School in Enniskillen, Fermanagh from 1864 to 1871, spending the summer months with his family in rural Waterford, Wexford and at William Wilde's family home in Mayo. Here the Wilde brothers played with the young George Moore.
Education
Oscar Wilde grew up in a house full of books, folklore, rhetoric, and interesting personalities, which enabled him to become a passionate reader and writer. His home became his first institution, where he stayed with his German governess and a French nursemaid, who taught him their languages. At the age of nine, he was admitted to the Portora Royal School at Enniskillen, where he enjoyed reading Greek and Roman studies. A bright student, he won the school’s prizes in the last two years. Later, in 1871, he won Royal School Scholarship and joined Trinity College, Dublin. He graduated in 1874 winning a scholarship for further study at Oxford. He also won the Berkeley Gold Medal as the best student in Greek. At Oxford, he continued to polish his creative and intellectual abilities. Also, he made his first writing attempt during his stay at Oxford.
Death
The iconic figure, Oscar Wilde, developed meningitis on the 25^th of November in 1900. This fatal disease swallowed all the pleasures of his life. Soon he lost the battle of life on the 30^th of November in 1900. At first, he was buried in Franc, while later his remains were transferred to another cemetery in 1909.

1. 
   In 1878, his first literary piece “Ravenna” won the Newdigate Prize for the best English versecomposition by an Oxford undergraduate.
   
2. 
   He married a wealthy Englishwoman, Constance Lloyd, in 1884 and the couple had two sons.
   
3. 
   Although he was a remarkable figure in the literary world, yet he had his dark sides too. He was imprisoned for his homosexuality in 1985, where he was forced to do hard labor.
   

His Career
Oscar Wilde began his literary career at a very young age. That is why his literary work achieved maturity quickly. During his stay at Oxford, he became involved in an aesthetic movement “Art for art sake,” which he reflected in most of his works. His first collection of poetry, Poems, was published in 1881. This publication received a mixed response from the readers and critics. Later, in 1888, he came up with fairy-stories, Happy Prince and Other Tales, which he wrote for his two sons. After getting the desired response, he tried his hands on novels, too, and his first and only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray hit the shelves in 1891. Unfortunately, the novel received a poor response but the author did not lose hope.
Later, in 1892, he produced his first playLady Windermere’s Fan. His successful effort paved the way for a string of highly popular comediesthat established him as a great playwright of his time.
His Style
Oscar Wilde possessed a remarkable ability to incorporate aspects of both realismand fantasyin his literary pieces³. It is through realistic dialectand thoughtful imagery, he documented two contrastive genresin his pieces. He vividly described situations and characters, using various literary devicessuch as morbid imagery, paradox,symbolism,metaphor, and rhetorical devices. Another stylethat is evident in his novel is the fantastic representation of dialoguerather than action. Also, he has an astonishing grip on the dark sideof human nature. Therefore, he presented the viciousness and darknessthat reside in everyone’s soul.
undergraduate degrees in the British university system.
During this time, Wilde became familiar with philosophies and writings on same-sex love, and lived for several years with a male lover he had met in 1876, the society painter Frank Miles. However, in keeping with the social mores of his day, such activities were kept secret from the straight world.
After graduating from Magdalen, Wilde returned to Dublin, where he met and fell in love with Florence Balcome. She in turn became engaged to Bram Stoker. On hearing of her engagement, Wilde wrote to her stating his intention to leave Ireland permanently. He left in 1878 and was to return to his native country only twice, for brief visits. The next six years were spent in London, Paris and the United States, where he travelled to deliver lectures.
In London, he met Constance Lloyd, daughter of the wealthy Queen's Counsel, Horace Lloyd⁴. She was visiting Dublin in 1884 when Oscar was in the city to give lectures at the Gaiety Theatre. He proposed to her and they married on
May 29, 1884 in Paddington, London. Constance's allowance of £250 allowed the Wildes to live in relative luxury. The couple had two sons, Cyril (1885) and Vyvyan (1886). After Oscar's downfall Constance took the surname Holland for herself and the boys. She died in 1898 following spinal surgery and was buried in Staglieno Cemetery in Genoa, Italy. Cyril was killed in France in World War I. Vyvyan survived the war and went on to become an author and translator. He published his memoir in 1954. His son, Merlin Holland, has edited and published several Worksabout his grandfather.
Aestheticism
The aesthetic movement, represented by the school of William Morris and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, had a permanent influence on English decorative art. As the leading aesthete, Wilde became one of the most prominent personalities of his day. Though he was ridiculed for them, his paradoxes and witty sayings were quoted on all sides.
In 1879 Wilde started to teach Aesthetic values in London. In 1882 he went on a lecture tour in the United States and Canada. He was torn apart by no small number of critics, The Wasp, a San Francisco newspaper, published a cartoon ridiculing Wilde and Aestheticism , but also was surprisingly well-received in such rough-and-tumble settings as the mining town of Leadville, Colorado. On his return to the United Kingdom, he worked as a reviewer for the Pall Mall Gazette in the years 1887-1889. Afterwards he became the editor of Woman's World.
Politically, Wilde endorsed an anarchistic brand of socialism, expounding his beliefs in the text "The Soul of Man Under Socialism".
Literary works
He had already published in 1881 a selection of his Poems, which, however, attracted admiration in only a limited circle. His most famous fairy tale, The House of Pomegranates (1892), acknowledged by the author to be "intended neither for the
British child nor the British public." His only novel Intentions.
His fame as a dramatist began with the production of Lady Windermere's Fanin February 1892. This was written at the request of George Alexander, actormanager of the St James's Theatre in London. Wilde described it as "one of those modern drawing-room Playswith pink lampshades". It was immediately successful, the author making the enormous sum of seven thousand pounds from the original run. (He apparently wore a green carnation for the first time on opening night).
Less successful was Salomé the same year, refused a licence for English performance by the Lord Chamberlain because it contained Biblical characters. Wilde was furious, even contemplating (he said) changing his nationality to become a French citizen. The play was published in English, with illustrations by Aubrey Beardsley, in 1894. A French edition had appeared the year before. His next comedy was A Woman Of No Importance, produced on 19th April 1893 at the Haymarket Theatre in London by Herbert Beerbohm Tree. It repeated the success of Lady Windermere's Fan, consolidating Wilde's reputation as the best writer of "comedy-of-manners" since Richard Brinsley Sheridan.
A slightly more serious note was struck with An Ideal Husband, produced by Lewis Waller at the Haymarket Theatre on 3 January 1895. This contains a political melodrama—as opposed to the marital melodrama of the earlier comedies—running alongside the usual Wildean Epigrams, social commentary, comedy, and romance. George Bernard Shaw's review said that "...Mr Wilde is to me our only serious playwright. He plays with everything: with wit, with philosophy, with drama, with actors, with audience, with the whole theatre..."
Barely a month later, his masterpiece The Importance Of Being Earnestappeared at the St James's Theatre⁵. It caused a sensation. Years later, the actor Allen Aynesworth (playing 'Algy' opposite George Alexander's 'Jack') told Wilde's biographer Hesketh Pearson that "In my fifty-three years of acting, I never remember a greater triumph than the first night of 'The Importance of Being Earnest'." Unlike the three previous comedies, Earnest is free of any melodrama, or even of any plot worth speaking about. It is in a class of its own in the whole of English drama as a piece of pure, delightful nonsense. (At least two versions of the play are in existence. Wilde originally wrote it in four acts, but George Alexander asked him to cut it down to three for the original production).
In between An Ideal Husband and The Importance of Being Earnest, Wilde wrote at least the scenario for a play concerning an adulterous affair. He never developed it, the Queensberry affair and his own trial intervening. Frank Harris eventually wrote a version called Mr and Mrs Daventry.
Wilde wrote another little-known play (in the form of a pantomime) for a friend of his, Chan Toon, which was called For Love of the King. The 1894 play also went under the name A Burmese Masque. It has never been widely circulated. One copy, held in the Leeds University Library's Fay and Geoffrey Elliott Collection is marked: "This is a spurious work attributed to Wilde without authority by a Mrs. Chan Toon, who was sent to prison for stealing money from her landlady. A.J.A. By the late 1870s, Wilde was already preoccupied with the philosophy of same-sex love, and had befriended several homosexual writers and law reformers. Wilde was infuenced by the writings of gay-rights pioneer Karl-Heinrich Ulrichs and joined a secret organisation called the "Order of Chaeronea", referring in letters to the campaign for legalization of homosexuality as "the Cause". Wilde also met Walt Whitman in America in 1881, writing to a friend that there was "no doubt" about the great American poet's sexual orientation — "I have the kiss of Walt Whitman still on my lips," he boasted.
In his public writings, Wilde's first celebration of sex between men and boys can be found in The Portrait of Mr. W. H. (1889), in which he propounds a theory that Shakespeare's sonnets were written out of the poet's love of young male Elizabethan actor "Willie Hughes".
The Queensberry scandal
In 1891, Wilde became intimate with Lord Alfred Douglas, who went by the nickname "Bosie". Bosie's father, John Sholto Douglas, 9th Marquess of Queensberry, became increasingly enraged at his son's involvement with Wilde⁶. He confronted the two publicly several times, and although each time Wilde was able to mollify the elder Douglas, eventually the Marquess threw down the gauntlet. He planned to interrupt the opening night of The Importance of Being Earnest with an insulting delivery of vegetables, but somebody tipped Wilde off and the Marquess was barred from entering the theatre.
Wilde: "The love that dares not speak its name" in this century is such a great affection of an elder for a younger man as there was between David and Jonathan, such as Plato made the very basis of his philosophy, and such as you find in the sonnets of Michelangelo and Shakespeare. It is that deep spiritual affection that is as pure as it is perfect. It dictates and pervades great works of art, like those of Shakespeare and Michelangelo, and those two letters of mine, such as they are. It is in this century misunderstood, so much misunderstood that it may be described as "The love that dares not speak its name," and on that account of it I am placed where I am now. It is beautiful, it is fine, it is the noblest form of affection. There is nothing unnatural about it. It is intellectual, and it repeatedly exists between an older and a younger man, when the older man has intellect, and the younger man has all the joy, hope and glamour of life before him. That it should be so, the world does not understand. The world mocks at it, and sometimes puts one in the pillory for it. Wilde was convicted on May 25, 1895 of gross indecency and sentenced to serve two years hard labour. He was imprisoned first at Pentonville and then at Wandsworth prison in London, and finally transferred in November to the prison in the town of Reading, some 30 miles west of London. Wilde knew the town from happier times when boating on the Thames and also from visits to the Palmer family, including a tour of the famous Huntley & Palmers biscuit factory quite close to the prison.
Now known as prisoner, at first he was not even allowed paper and pen to write, but a later governor was more friendly. Thus during his time in prison, Wilde wrote a 50,000 word letter to Douglas, which he was not allowed to send while still a prisoner, but which he was allowed to take with him at the end of his sentence. On his release he gave the manuscript to Ross, who may or may not have carried out Wilde's instructions to send a copy to Douglas who, in turn, denied having received it. Ross published a much expurgated version of the letter (about 30% only) in 1905 (4 years after Wilde's death) with the title The Letters of Oscar Wilde. The manuscripts of The Duchess Of Padua, written by Wilde about 1883 for Mary Anderson, but not acted by her, was published in a German translation (Die Herzogin von Padua, translated by Max Meyerfeld) in Berlin.
Wilde died of cerebral meningitis on November 30, 1900. Different opinions are given on the cause of the meningitis; Richard Ellmann claimed it was syphilitic; Merlin Holland, Wilde's grandson, thought this to be a misconception, noting that
Wilde's meningitis followed a surgical intervention, perhaps a mastoidectomy; Wilde's physicians, Dr. Paul Cleiss and A'Court Tucker reported that the condition stemmed from an old suppuration of the right ear (une ancienne suppuration de l'oreille droite d'ailleurs en traitement depuis plusieurs années) and do not allude to syphilis. Most modern scholars and doctors agree that syphilis was unlikely to have been the cause of his death. Wilde was buried in the Cimetière de Bagneux outside Paris but was later moved to Le Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. His tomb in the
Père Lachaise was designed by the sculptor Sir Jacob Epstein, at the request of Robert Ross, who also asked for a small compartment to be made for his own ashes. Ross's ashes were later transferred to the tomb in 1950. The numerous spots on it are actually lipstick traces from admirers. Recently, a plaque asking visitors not to desecrate the tomb and a metal fence had to be put around the grave due to the admirers' enthusiasm.