Oscar Wilde: from the Classics to Criticism as Art

• Autor(a) principal: Waki, Fábio
• Data de Publicação: 2023
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Ilha do Desterro
• Texto Completo: https://periodicos.ufsc.br/index.php/desterro/article/view/96423
• topic: Oscar Wilde; British Aestheticism; Classical Reception; Critical Theory; Art Criticism; Oscar Wilde; Esteticismo Britânico; Recepção Clássica; Teoria Crítica; Crítica de Arte

This article examines the notebooks that Oscar Wilde kept for his Literae Humaniores studies at the University of Oxford and connects them to his maturity works to explain some of the aspects of the influence of Ancient Greek Literature on his modern conception of art criticism. Specifically, this article explains how he exploited certain ideas proposed by his precursors—such as Matthew Arnold’s idea of criticism, Walter Pater’s idea of impressionistic criticism, and John Addington Symonds’ idea of the regency of a canonical art—to substantiate a rather bold proposal to Victorian intelligentsia and cultural circles: namely, that, in Victorian Modernity, the critic should be raised to the condition of artist and her criticism to the condition of an art in itself.