As I entered this class, I knew I had little knowledge of Wilde\u2019s works, but I did carry a smidge of an idea of who he was as a person, or at least the knowledge that he certainly stood out and left his mark in life and death. Now, as I have started to explore his work within the class, I still find myself drawn to getting to know and understand Wilde the man alongside Wilde the artist. He might\u2019ve argued that there is no difference between man (at least some of them) and artist, but I find it interesting to think about Wilde\u2019s personality as he portrayed it, and as it might\u2019ve truly been, if we can properly deduce such things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One thing that has stood out to me is the conversation we have had about curiosity and wickedness. In the first \u201cPhrase and Philosophy,\u201d Wilde says that \u201cWickedness is a myth invented by good people to account for the curious attractiveness of others\u201d We discussed in class on the 26th<\/sup> about the ways this phrase contains a bit of a twist and turn despite its brevity. At first, the reader sees that the myth of wickedness was created by \u201cgood people,\u201d which has positive connotations for those people. But, the second part of the phrase makes it a sort of jest towards these \u201cgood people,\u201d basically saying that they cannot explain their blusteriness when confronted with attractiveness, so they must label it as wicked. We also talked about the use of the word \u201ccurious,\u201d which in this phrase we took to mean unknown, mysterious, or strange. The word \u201cothers\u201d conveys the feeling of being non-standard, or different. This can all be related to sexuality and queerness with Wilde. Though these \u201cgood people\u201d label non-conformity, or queerness, as otherness and wickedness, there is still a sort of attraction to it. Like they can\u2019t help but look even if they don\u2019t condone it. This reminded me of something I read for my American Studies class about conspiracy theories, \u201cAnti-Catholicism has always been the pornography of the Puritan,\u201d meaning that conspiratorial theories by Puritans against Catholics (aka the confessional as a place of seduction, or \u201clibertine priests\u201d) has served as a way to indulge in seductive or wicked thought or observance even though the Puritans are denouncing it. (Hofstadter, \u201cThe Paranoid Style in American Politics\u201d). And we discussed how Wilde had in part indulged in that observance, in the attention. He shined in his “curiousness.” But, at the same time, we have discussed how Wilde may have been using this presentation as a way to mask himself so he wouldn\u2019t have to answer for non-conformative style, under \u201cL\u2019art pour l\u2019art.\u201d I find this duality fascinating and I look forward to learning more about it as we continue to read Wilde.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As I entered this class, I knew I had little knowledge of Wilde\u2019s works, but I did carry a smidge of an idea of who he was as a person, or at least the knowledge that he certainly stood out and left his mark in life and death. Now, as I have started to explore … Continue reading Observance and Indulgence<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4165,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[524443],"tags":[525043,526048,525678,525300,524802],"class_list":["post-108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wilde-the-man","tag-curiousness","tag-facade-2","tag-indulgence","tag-queerness","tag-wickedness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/oascarwilde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/oascarwilde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/oascarwilde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/oascarwilde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4165"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/oascarwilde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=108"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/oascarwilde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":109,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/oascarwilde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108\/revisions\/109"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/oascarwilde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/oascarwilde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/oascarwilde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}