{"id":189,"date":"2022-02-13T22:19:32","date_gmt":"2022-02-14T03:19:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/oascarwilde\/?p=189"},"modified":"2022-02-13T22:19:51","modified_gmt":"2022-02-14T03:19:51","slug":"189","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/oascarwilde\/2022\/02\/13\/189\/","title":{"rendered":"What is the Point of it All?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Our talk about \u201cThe Happy Prince\u201d and other tales on Wednesday stuck with me a lot after class because, weirdly, they allow us to have a framework about what art is. We read Wilde\u2019s essays about art through \u201cThe Critic as Artist\u201d and \u201cThe Decay of Lying,\u201d but even then, his philosophy of art is difficult to pin down when we place them in the contexts of his poems, short stories\u2014and soon\u2014his plays and only novel. On Wednesday, we talked a lot about how we were unsure whether the tales could be classified as an accurate \u201cfairy tale\u201d or whether they were Wilde\u2019s twisted version of a fairy tale. We also discussed whether children could understand everything Wilde placed before them or if the tales were meant to evolve and grow over time with the reader. Why did we read the short stories we read (\u201cThe Canterville Ghost\u201d and \u201cLord Arthur Saville\u2019s Crime\u201d<\/em>)? What is the point of it all?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Professor Kinyon\u2019s argument that Wilde is playing with us makes the most sense to me, admittedly, but it\u2019s hard to justify this with the religious elements peppered throughout each story. \u201cLord Arthur Saville\u2019s Crime\u201d is mostly humorous; that\u2019s the value I see in it, at least. Yet I can\u2019t overlook the message about predestination, as well as the attack on \u201cduty\u201d that the Victorians upheld. It is the same with \u201cThe Canterville Ghost,\u201d where nationality undoubtedly plays a role in the story with Wilde\u2019s poking fun at Americans. But then I pose another question: Why do I take religion seriously but everything else not seriously? My current view is that I find great entertainment value in Wilde\u2019s art; it makes me laugh in all its cleverness and the jabs at his characters. Suddenly, when we talk about religion in Wilde\u2019s art, everything takes a deeper, more serious dimension\u2014but why does it suddenly become deeper than just entertainment when religion is introduced?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We\u2019ve also already discussed that Wilde\u2019s philosophy of art is contradictory; some of the philosophy he puts forth in his essays ends up contradicting elements in his stories or poems, such as the strictness of form he adheres to in the poem as well as his introducing \u201cmoral imperatives\u201d through \u201cThe Happy Prince,\u201d \u201cThe Nightingale and the Rose,\u201d \u201cThe Selfish Giant,\u201d and possibly \u201cThe Devoted Friend\u201d arguably introduce moral imperatives. Yet the contradictory part of this lies in the last closing paragraphs of \u201cThe Devoted Friend\u201d:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201c\u2018I am rather afraid that I have annoyed him,\u2019 answered the Linnet. \u2018The fact is, that I told him a story with a moral.\u2019<\/p>

     \u2018Ah! that is always a very dangerous thing to do,\u2019 said the Duck.<\/p>

     And I quite agree with her.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

This blog post is all over the place because Wilde\u2019s philosophy is also all over the place, and I find with these beginning tales we have been reading that it\u2019s challenging to see Wilde in his art. All in all, I am super excited to start reading The Picture of Dorian Gray<\/em> and compare my theses and arguments with Wilde\u2019s treatment of the novel, because Professor Kinyon has argued that Wilde shows too much of himself in The Picture of Dorian Gray<\/em>, and the preface protects himself as the artist against being identified in the art.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our talk about \u201cThe Happy Prince\u201d and other tales on Wednesday stuck with me a lot after class because, weirdly, they allow us to have a framework about what art is. We read Wilde\u2019s essays about art through \u201cThe Critic as Artist\u201d and \u201cThe Decay of Lying,\u201d but even then, his philosophy of art is … Continue reading What is the Point of it All?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4163,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[12656,524158,73644,535716,73435,28394],"class_list":["post-189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-art","tag-artist","tag-fairy-tales","tag-message","tag-morality","tag-theme"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/oascarwilde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189","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\/4163"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/oascarwilde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=189"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/oascarwilde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":191,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/oascarwilde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189\/revisions\/191"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/oascarwilde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/oascarwilde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/oascarwilde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}