OSCAR WILDE

Born in 1854, Wilde was a gifted poet, playwright and wit. He was part of
the aesthetic movement. He was illustrious for preaching the importance
of style in life and art, and of attacking Victorian narrow-mindedness.
Wide was an aristocrat who always opposed the hypocrisy and double
morality. In many of his works, it is evidenced a rejection of false values
as the excess of pride, power, and social representation. On the other
hand, the modesty, the labour, social sensitivity and true love is exalted.
His works are distinguished for their humor, irony and criticism of the
social prejudices of the time.
Oscar Wilde had often spoken of his belief that, in artistic matters, style
outweighed sincerity or substance.
Oscar Wilde had a phenomenal ability to incorporate aspects of both
fantasy and realism into his works. Through thoughtful imagery and
realistic dialect, he successfully merged two contradicting genres into a
fascinatingly morbid tale. Wilde also exceled in his use of imagery. He
vividly described people and situations with many types of literary
devices though his favorite and therefore most frequented, is morbid
imagery. He commanded an astonishing mastery of the art of morbidity,
describing in unusual detail images of corpses and blood and a murder
that would rival anything in modern cinema.
Another style that is prevalent in Oscar Wildes novel is the presence of
dialogue rather than action. He prefers his characters to engage in
casual conversation in a sitting room much more often than actual action.
Through his writing, Wilde seems to be striving to stimulate the visual
and musical arts through language primarily.
Whether descriptive or dialogic, Wildes writing in the novel is
characterized by the use of paradox (a statement or proposition that
seems self-contradictory or absurd but in reality expresses a possible
truth). It is his favorite stylistic device
Another style familiar to Oscar Wilde is his incredible talent for morbidity
and evil. He had an astonishing grasp on the reality of human nature and
the darkness that resides in everyones soul. Unlike most writers of his
time, Wilde was particularly in tune with the darker side of things. He
recognized the lust for immortality that is built into every human being
and exemplifi ed it in his novel. He had an insight into evil that few
authors of his time period could claim and he mastered this insight and
put it into writing with incredible ease.