Дистанційне
навчання 10-A (16.12.2020)
Lesson
Saturday,
the sixteenth of December
Theme: The
Late 19th And Early 20th Centuries. Oscar Wilde
The Late 19th And Early 20th Centuries
As
educational opportunity expanded among African Americans after the war, a
self-conscious Black middle class with serious literary ambitions emerged in
the later 19th century. Their challenge lay in reconciling the
genteel style and sentimental tone of much popular American literature,
which middle-class Black writers often imitated, to a real-world sociopolitical
agenda that, after the abandonment of Reconstruction in
the South, obliged African American writers
to argue the case for racial justice to
an increasingly indifferent white audience. In the mid-1880s Oberlin College graduate Anna Julia Cooper,
a distinguished teacher and the author of A Voice
from the South (1892), began a speaking and writing career that
highlighted the centrality of educated Black women in the broad-gauged reform
movements in Black communities of
the post-Reconstruction era.
African
American poetry developed
along two paths after 1880. The traditionalists were led by Albery Allson
Whitman, who made his fame among Black readers with two book-length epic poems, Not a Man,
and Yet a Man (1877) and The Rape of Florida (1884), the latter
written in Spenserian
stanzas.
Oscar
Wilde, in full Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde, (born October 16,
1854, Dublin,
Ireland—died November 30, 1900, Paris, France), Irish wit,
poet, and dramatist whose reputation rests on his only novel, The Picture of
Dorian Gray (1891), and on his comic masterpieces Lady Windermere’s
Fan (1892) and The Importance of Being Earnest (1895). He was a
spokesman for the late 19th-century Aesthetic movement
in England, which advocated art for art’s sake,
and he was the object of celebrated civil and criminal suits involving
homosexuality and ending in his imprisonment (1895–97).
He
was called the king of paradoxes. Indeed, Wilde's thought tended to be molded
into outwardly contradictory and shocking forms. “It is necessary to make
common truths tumble on a tight rope of thought in order to test them for
stability,” said Wilde. Sometimes he was so carried away by the search for
originality that he could sacrifice depth. Oscar Wilde's appearance and
behavior are also unusual. A pale, bloodless face, wide cheekbones, no sign of
vegetation, although at that time the lush mustache and beards of a goatee were
fashionable. From under heavy eyelids, dark gray eyes always hide the irony.
Long, curly hair falls freely to strong, like a loader's shoulders. In the
crowd, he rises almost a head above the passers-by, but he would have attracted
attention, if he was of ordinary height: with an exquisite casual suit, a ring
in the shape of a scarab - the ancient Egyptians revered this beetle as the
embodiment of a solar deity - and an invariable violet in his buttonhole.
Notebook wit competed in mockery at him, satirical couplets are sung about him:
I am poetic, ah, I am aesthetic, Narcissus is really akin to me. " He
liked to puzzle everyone with the eccentricity of judgments, behavior, actions.
However, most of Wilde's paradoxes are by no means the spectacular bling that
adorns the dress of eloquence, and behind their shocking abstractness are the
judgments of the original and discerning mind. As one of the heroes of the
novel "The Picture of Dorian Gray" says, "the truth of life is
revealed to us precisely in the form of paradoxes." "Only the outer
and superficial lurk in the soul for a long time, the deepest soon comes
out." "Those who see the difference between soul and body have
neither body nor soul."
Homework
You have a
list with quotations from Plays by Oscar Wilde. Look them through and find
paradoxes. Choose any paradox and give your opinion about it. How do you
understand it?
Don’t use big words. They
mean so little.
An Ideal Husband
Experience is the name every
one gives to their mistakes.
Lady Windermere’s Fan
Little things are so very
difficult to do.
An Ideal Husband
Sooner or later we have all
to pay for what we do.
An Ideal Husband
There is nothing like youth.
Youth is the Lord of life.
A Woman of No Importance
