This book focuses on the role that the Oxford classical curriculum has had in shaping Oscar Wilde's aestheticism. It positions Wilde as a classically trained intellectual and outlines the path he took to gain recognition as a writer and promoter of the aesthetic movement. This narrative is conveyed through a broad range of literary sources, including Wilde's travel poetry, American lectures, and canonical works like 'The Critic as Artist', The Soul of Man, The Picture of Dorian Gray and De Profundis. This study proposes that Wilde approached aestheticism as a personalised, self-directed learning experience a mode of self-culture which could be used to maintain an intellectual life outside of the university. It also explores Wilde's thoughts on education and considers the significance of male friendship at Oxford, and in Wilde's life and literature.

Provides the first comprehensive analysis of Oscar Wilde's history with Oxford University ? Presents an interdisciplinary approach, combining research in nineteenth-century literature, culture and history, with recent classical reception scholarship Argues that Wilde promotes aesthetic consumption as a means of recreating the university environment, and the milieu of Victorian Oxford in the privacy of the home

Autorentext

Leanne Grech is an interdisciplinary researcher who is interested nineteenth-century culture and classical reception. She completed a PhD at the University of Melbourne in 2016 and is currently teaching history at Trinity College, Melbourne. Her work on Wilde has been published in Oscar Wilde and Classical Antiquity (2017).

Inhalt

1. Introduction: Greek Forms and Gothic Cloisters.- 2. Popery and Paganism: Divided Loyalties in the Travel Poems.- 3. American Beauty: Aestheticism Across the Atlantic.- 4. Civilizing England: Oxford, Empire, and Aesthetic Education.- 5. Fervent Friendships: Oxford Platonism and The Picture of Dorian Gray.- 6. Wilde and Douglas: Redefining the Beloved.- 7. Epilogue: Some Thoughts on Aesthetic Education.