ENGLISH LITERATURE (CBSE/UGC NET)

Detailed explanation-1: -The Aesthetic Movement in fin-de-siècle England, as interpreted by Oscar Wilde, revolved around the ideal that the utility of one’s actions should be to create the maximal amount of beauty and pleasure in one’s life, and nothing more.

Detailed explanation-2: -While Wilde wouldn’t want to be accused of sincerity, he was certainly devoted to Aestheticism in his life as well as his art.

Detailed explanation-3: -Wilde’s Aestheticism was based on the cult of beauty and pleasure, what Lord Henry defines “a new Hedonism”, which was to replace to Puritanism of Victoria society. He transposed in his life style what he believed in and wrote it in his works; he dressed in an elegant and eccentric way in order to shock the Victorians.

Detailed explanation-4: -Oscar Wilde, an aesthete who was a frontrunner in Aestheticism, was a playwright and author whose work embodied the idea that art’s only goal is to be beautiful for its own sake, which was a strong contrast to prevailing Victorian thought.

Detailed explanation-5: -In his only political essay, ‘The Soul of Man under Socialism’ (1891), Wilde presented libertarian views and a rather peculiar vision of socialism as a social system that would replace a severely compromised capitalism in an indefinite future.