Bernard Shaw and Oscar
Wilde
Bernard Shaw
• George Bernard Shaw was born in Dublin in
1856, but removed to London in 1876. he
began his career as a novelist, then joined the
Fabian socialist movement and , like Wells,
devoted himself to social propaganda. Since his
novels did not sell and since he could find no
commercial producer for his early plays, he
earned his living as a critic of music, art and the
theatre. Later Shaw came under the influence
of Henry George and William Morris and took
an interest in socialist theories.
• Shaw was strongly against the credo of “art for art’s
sake” held by those decadent aesthetic artists. In his
critical essays, he vehemently condemned the “well
made” but cheap, hollow plays which filled the English
theatre of the late of 19th century to meet the low taste
of the middle class. Shaw held that art should serve
social purposes by reflecting human life, revealing
social contradictions and educating the common
people. In his long dramatic career, Shaw wrote more
than 50 plays, touching upon a variety of subjects. His
early plays were mainly concerned with social
problems and directed towards the criticism of the
contemporary social, economic, moral and religious
evils.
Pygmalion (My Fair Lady)
Theory of “art for art’s sake”:
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Oscar Wilde
The picture of Dorian Gray, 1891
Salome, 1893
Lady Windermere’s Fan, 1892
A Woman of No Importance, 1893
An ideal Husband, 1895
The importance of Being Earnest, 1895
The Ballad of Redding Gao, 1898
Some terms for knowing
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Art for Art’s sake
Neo- Romanticism
Naturalism
Realism
Aestheticism
Art for Art’s sake
• That art is nothing to do with morality (art is
not moral immoral but amoral), that the best
of art is pure art, that the duty of an art critic
is to tell his own impressions of a work of art,
and that the function of art is to attract, to
please and to provide enjoyment. But he
elaborated on this theory of art for art’s sake,
and even declared that it is not art that
reflects nature but it is nature that is the
reflection of art.
Neo-Romanticism
• The term neo-romanticism is synonymous
with post-Romanticism or late Romanticism.
• Characteristic themes include longing for
perfect love, utopian landscapes, nature
reclaiming ruins, romantic death, and historyin-landscape.
• Neo-romanticism tended to shed somewhat
the emphasis of Romanticism on 'the hero' and
romantic nationalism. This was particularly so
in the decades after both of the world wars.
Naturalism
• Naturalism is a term of literary history,
primarily a French movement in prose fiction
and the drama during the final third of the
19th-cent.
• In France Emile Zola (1840-1902) was the
dominant practitioner of Naturalism in prose
fiction and the chief exponent of its doctrines.
• Broadly speaking, Naturalism is
characterized by a refusal to idealize
experience and by the persuasion that human
life is strictly subjected to natural laws.
Realism
• Realism is a literary term , the original
definition of realism by Sir P. Harvey was "a
loosely used term meaning truth to the
observed facts of life (especially when they
are gloomy)." Realism has been chiefly
concerned with the commonplaces of
everyday life among the middle and lower
classes, where character is a product of social
factors and environment is the integral element
in the dramatic complications.
• Realism in literature is an approach that
attempts to describe life without idealization or
romantic subjectivity. Although realism is not
limited to any one century or group of writers, it
is most often associated with the literary
movement in 19th-century France, specifically
with the French novelists Flaubert and Balzac.
In the drama, realism is most closely associated
with Ibsen's social plays. Later writers felt that
realism laid too much emphasis on external
reality. Many, notably Henry James, turned to a
psychological realism that closely examined the
complex workings of the mind (stream of
consciousness)
• Aestheticism
• It was an aesthetic movement which originated
in the second half of 19th and flourished in the
last decade of 19th century. Socially, it was a
reaction against the materialism and
commercialism of the Victorian industrial era.
Artistically, it was a revolt against grubby
naturalism. Aestheticism advocated the
independence of art from social reality and the
divorce of art from morality. It emphasized the
value of the ecstatic nature of the moment
inspired by art. It reached its peak in England
with the efforts of Oscar Wilde.