Oscar Wilde's Criticalism : Literary Criticism

         The novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, written by Oscar Wilde originally appeared in Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine in 1890.  It was then published in 1891, in book form, containing six additional chapters with revisions. The first reviews of Dorian Gray were mostly unfavorable.  It was condemned for its speculative treatment  of immoral or at least uncomfortable subjects. A review in the St. James’s Gazette by Samuel Henry Jeyes, journalist and biographer was titled "‘A Study in Puppydom."   Jeyes refers to Wilde’s idle, “effeminate” characters in the book and writes: “The puppies appear to fill up the intervals of talk by plucking daisies and playing with them, and

The deconstruction school of literary criticism is different from the formalist and new critics, as well as the reader-response

Such fakes, Wilde knew from his reading about Chatterton, might strike some interpreters as the result of ungovernable, if not immoral, impulses. In the critical essays and shorter fiction that Wilde wrote from the mid-1880s onward, he radically inverted such interpretations. Throughout these essays, shorter fiction, and dramas, generous artistic license, lying, and even criminal intent become—as we explain in later chapters—the foundation for great art.

Later perhaps, practiced debaters--Jack, Maurice, Piggy--would use their whole art to twist the meeting: but now at the beginning, the subject of the debate must be laid out clearly” (Golding 60). In the paragraph above, Golding’s writing style is poetic. His writing

Plato and Wild’s perspective of art is quite different from each other. In Plato’s “Ion”, it is said that all good poets compose their poems, not by art, but because they are inspired and possessed. Artists develop power from the poet who is inspired by God himself. “God takes away the minds of poets and uses them as his ministers” (Plato). Within Oscar Wild’s “Decay of Lying”, it is said that “life imitates art far more than that art imitates

Just like everything else in life, art has its critics. Art criticism is the expression used to describe the act of making selective judgments, both positive and negative, about an art piece. Just as art is so diversely expressed and interpreted, those who critique it also have various methods and use various standards when criticizing an art piece. There are many theories critics use to evaluate art but there are three basic theories most commonly put to use by professionals. The three basic theories are: formal theories, contextual theories, and expressive theories. Formal theories focus on the formalities of art. Critics using formal theories pay close attention to the making of a piece, how each section of the art piece works to form a visual experience that may or may not attract the attention of those who come across it. Formalists’ attention is centered on the formal organization rather than the themes, which they deem irrelevant. Contextualists, on the other hand, value the theme and its relevance to the times in which the artwork was created. The contextual theories deal with the context in which an art piece is used; what it symbolizes concerning the culture and values of the environment. Lastly, there are the expressive theories. Expressionists are more concerned with the artist and the personal expression put into the work. Also, because art is a method of communication, expressive theories

“A Modest Proposal” by Jonathan Swift, the authors use literary criticism so the reader can

The standardization of European scholarship places limitations on how the marginal subject can articulate its existence. Barbara Christian’s “The Race for Theory” asks “For whom are we doing what we are doing when we do literary criticism?” Davies would respond to this query by stating that current scholarship is written to and for the center. Based

Forum 17.4 (Autumn 1976): 3-11. Rpt. in Literature Criticism from 1400 to 1800. Ed. Thomas J. Schoenberg and Lawrence J. Trudeau. Vol. 101. Detroit: Gale, 2004. Literature Resource Center. Web. 6 July 2015.

Wilde uses the satirical devices travesty and irony in order to portray marriage negatively. Through his use of satire, one can infer that Wilde sees marriage as a hindrance and a task that society seems to be obsessed with. In Act 1, the proposal scene is shown. After Gwendolen and Jack admit that they have feelings for each other, Jack states that they should get married at once, but Gwendolen decides that Jack must properly propose first. The use of travesty is present here when the meaningful act of proposing to someone is constructed to be comical. Jack asks Gwendolen if he may propose to her. When most individuals wish to propose, they do not usually ask for permission first. Once Jack does propose, Gwendolen asks as though she is surprised and asks, “How long have you been about it!” (line 360). Through the way that Jack and Gwendolen conduct themselves, marriage can be perceived as trivial, when it is actually a significant act because a person is committing to a life with another individual. This shows that Wilde does not agree with marriage and it is not to be taken as seriously as society treats it today.

New Criticism is an unusual and dying theory in this generation. In today's age, people analyze and rate a piece of text on impact it has on the individual person or society. New Criticism eliminates feelings,ratings and the impact a piece of had but rather focuses on the text itself. New Criticism, incorporating Formalism, examines the relationships between a text's ideas and its form, between what a text says and the way it says it. New Critics "may find tension, irony, or paradox in this relation, but they usually resolve it into unity and coherence of meaning" (Biddle 100).

W. K. Wimsatt, Jr. and M. C. Beardsley co-authored “The Intentional Fallacy” in response to the debate among literary scholars in the 1940s concerning the issue of authorial intent as a measure of judgment upon a literary work of art. Wimsatt and Beardsley (468-469) champion the idea of anti-intentionalism in opposition to noted scholars and critics of the day, arguing that the success and meaning of a literary work must not be judged by the author’s intent, if it is even available, but rather solely by the work itself. Because the reader cannot possibly know an author’s intent at the moment the work was conceived, the authors suggest that if a poem is successful, its success is measured within its own structure, content, and language. It succeeds

Formal criticism is a performance evaluation, formal setting, constructive criticism and offering criticism in manner that non-disruptive, or professional through the elements of structure, style, tone, etc. The formal critics emphasize connotation and figurations within a text, Brooks states: “That in a successful work, form and content cannot be separated. That form is meaning. That literature is ultimately metaphorical and symbolic. That the general and the universal are not seized upon by abstraction, but got at through the concrete and the particular. That literature is not a surrogate for religion.” The context is important because the readers have to think about every sentence in the story. Since the contexts guide the reader to the narrator’s point of view so it seems there is one way direction, the reader cannot be lost. In order to understand more indepthly in formalism structure, I break it down in two parts which are formal element and connect formal element to interpretive meaning.

Not only does Oscar Wilde express this idea through his characters, but also through himself when stating his resilient view that the observer enters a critiquing form that is not only immoral, but deceitful. Oscar Wilde deliberately makes the Preface a whole chapter discussing the subject, notably when he writes, “All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril. Those who read the symbol do so at their peril. It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors” (Wilde 4).

Art criticism, defined as the linguistic exploration of artworks, or talk about art (Feldman, 1970). Art criticism is driven by various individual perceptions, world views, morals, and values. Throughout this essay I will explain my thoughts and feelings about a particular piece of artwork I find fascinating. For this essay I will be focusing on Grant Wood's portrait painting of the American Gothic. The American Gothic painting was created in the 1930s and has become an iconic piece of art as well as in my opinion his greatest work.