During his life, Oscar Wilde was influenced by a variety of people. His mother had an impact on him while he was growing up, and several of his professors and certain philosophers had a significant influence on him. These influences spilled out in his writings as he got older.
Wilde’s mother, Jane Francesca Wilde was a poet and could speak eight languages fluently. She met Oscar’s father while he was studying medicine at Trinity College in Dublin. At the time she was only sixteen and he was twenty years old. They married when she turned eighteen and Oscar was born two years later in 1854. Oscar’s mother had a big impact on his early childhood education. She would tell him fairy tales and stories from Greek mythology as well as teaching him some of the languages she knew. Oscar also developed an early interest in reading from his mother who would often read to him (Oscar Wilde 2).
AtTrinity College, Oscar Wilde was first exposed to many different philosophies that would later play a role in his writing. While at Trinity, Wilde read the works of Aristotle and Plato which influenced him greatly. One of Oscar’s professors, John Kells Ingram, also had an impact on Wilde’s thinking (Oscar Wilde 3). Ingram was a poet and Oscar Wilde admired his work. Ingram also introduced Wilde to the writings of Walter Pater who had a big influence on Wilde’s early thinking and writing.
As an adult, Oscar Wilde continued to be influenced by many different people and things. He was friends with many other writers and artists including Aubrey Beardsley and William Butler Yeats. These relationships helped to shape Wilde’s thinking and his writing. In addition to his friends, Wilde was also influenced by the aesthetic movement. This movement believed that art should be appreciated for its beauty and not for its moral value. This is a belief that Oscar Wilde would later express in his own writing (Oscar Wilde 4).
Influences on Wilde’s writing included the Greeks’ belief in life after death and their ideas about physical beauty, which supplied him with a plethora of material for The Picture of Dorian Gray. As a youngster, he had been pampered, and his interest in the movement Aesthetics and Moral Ambiguity was driven by his coddled lifestyle. This has resulted in one of the most frightening works of horror fiction ever written.
Oscar Wilde was a major influence on the horror genre. He was exposed to the Hellenistic ideals of Epicurus at a young age, and his coddled lifestyle as a child allowed him to explore the aesthetic movement and develop his own unique style of writing. Wilde’s work is full of ambiguity, which allows readers to interpret it in their own way. This makes his work highly adaptable to different genres, including horror.
Wilde’s study of Epicurus heavily influenced his views on morality. For Wilde, pleasure was the highest good, and he believed that people should pursue it without restraint. This philosophy can be seen in The Picture of Dorian Gray, where Dorian indulges in every vice imaginable without any thought for the consequences. Wilde’s own life was a testament to this philosophy; he lived extravagantly and pursued every pleasure he could find.
Wilde’s coddled childhood also contributed to his development as a writer. He was born into a wealthy family and never had to want for anything. As a result, he was able to focus on his studies and develop his love of literature. This privileged background is evident in The Picture of Dorian Gray, where Dorian is able to live a life of luxury without ever having to worry about money.
Finally, Wilde’s devotion to the aesthetic movement played a major role in his writing. Aestheticism is the belief that art should be appreciated for its own sake, without any regard for its moral or social implications. This philosophy can be seen in The Picture of Dorian Gray, where Dorian is more interested in his own beauty than in the goodness of his soul. Wilde himself was a major proponent of aestheticism, and he believed that art should be beautiful, not didactic.
Wilde’s unique combination of influences has produced one of the most original works of horror fiction ever written. The Picture of Dorian Gray is a classic example of how a work can be both aesthetically pleasing and morally ambiguous. It is this ambiguity that makes Wilde’s work so adaptable to different genres, and it is what makes him such an important figure in the history of horror.
His mother, Speranza, may have motivated his effeminacy in life and how he regarded beauty. “It was said that Speranza (Wilde’s mother) had wanted a girl. This might very well be the case, since she already had one son. It is claimed that Speranza dressed Oscar in girl’s clothes. In a way this is true: all middle-class Victorian boys were clothed in petticoats from birth.”(Fido 16)
Even when Oscar was not dressing in girls clothes, he was probably influenced by the way his mother looked at beauty.
Oscar Wilde’s views on art and aesthetics were shaped by the Aesthetic Movement of the late 1800s. “Wilde became one of the most articulate proponents of Aestheticism, a movement that advocated ‘art for art’s sake'”(Fido 17). This means that Wilde believed that art should be beautiful for the sake of being beautiful, and not have any sort of moral message. This is evident in much of Wilde’s work, such as “The Picture of Dorian Gray.”
Wilde was also influenced by John Ruskin, a famous critic of the time. Ruskin “argued that art should tell the truth and that artists had a duty to improve the world around them”(Fido 17). Wilde took this idea and ran with it, creating works that were often critical of Victorian society. For example, “The Importance of Being Earnest” is a play that pokes fun at the way upper-class Victorians behaved.
The first clue comes from Wildes’ mother, who, according to these comments, may have prompted his homosexuality. She very well may have done so, but she also taught him grace and a love of beauty that most men never seem to grasp. Speranza began a chain of events that resulted in an acclaim and a tragedy by treating Oscar as her daughter for the first several years of his life. She set up a process of thinking philosophically and analytically.
Oscar Wilde was a man who broke free from the shackles of Victorian England. He did this by using his wit and intelligence to subvert the expectations of a society that limited him. Oscar Wilde was born in Dublin, Ireland on October 16, 1854 to Sir William Wilde and Jane Francesca Elgee. Oscar Wilde’s mother, Lady Jane Francesca Wilde (née Elgee), was a successful poet and journalist.
She wrote under the pseudonym “Speranza” and her work was published in The Irish Times, The Nation, and The Dublin University Review. Oscar’s father, Sir William Wilde, was one of the most eminent surgeons of his time in Ireland. In 1864, Wildes parents decided to send him to Portora Royal School in Enniskillen, County Fermanagh. Oscar Wilde went on to study at Trinity College in Dublin, where he became involved in the university’s Gothic Society.
He graduated with a B.A. in 1878 and won the Berkeley Gold Medal for Greek. In 1874, while still an undergraduate, Wilde published a book of poems, titled Poems by Oscar Wilde. The book was not a success and Wilde later remarked that its failure “killed” his poetic aspirations for many years. Despite this setback, he continued to write prose and plays throughout his life.
