Oscar Wilde英国文学 幻灯片课件.ppt

* * Oscar Wilde 1854-1900 “art for art’s sake” I. Life 1854 Dublin, Ireland. Father—a physicist, mother—poet, writer 1871-1974 Classical lit. at Trinity College, Dublin 1874 Magdalen College, Oxford 1876-1877 Greek and Italy. 1891 met Lord Alfred Douglas “Bosie” 1892-1895 four plays established his fame. Salome. Lady Windermere’s Fan. An Ideal Husband. The Importance of Being Ernest. 1895-1897 served his sentence at the Reading Gaol. the charge— gross indecency for homosexual acts. 1900 died of meningitis in Paris. II Works Novel: The Picture of Dorian Grey (1891) Fairy Tales: The Happy Prince and Other Tales (1888) Essay: The Portrait of Mr. W. H. (1889) Letter: De Profundis (1905)《自深处》 “An artist should create beautiful things, but should put nothing of his own life into them. We live in an age when men treat art as if it were meant to be a form of autobiography. We have lost the abstract sense of beauty. ” The Characters John (known as Jack) Worthing, alias Ernest Worthing Algernon Moncrieff, friend of John Lady Bracknell, Algernon’s aunt Gwendolen Fairfax, daughter of Lady Bracknell Cecily Cardew, ward of John Worthing The Plot Whenever Jack Worthing slips away to London from his Hertfordshire estate he says he is going to see his (fictitious) wayward brother Ernest. Once there he keeps his privacy by calling himself Ernest - luckily so as his beloved Gwendolen declares she could only love an Ernest. Her cousin Algy is the one person who knows Jacks secret and one day he travels down to the estate, announcing himself to Jacks attractive ward Cecily as bad brother Ernest. Cecily is much taken with him and with his name, so on Jacks return home and Gwendoens unexpectedly arrival it becomes clear there are both too many and too few Ernests earnestly courting. The Theme The Importance of Being Earnest?is funny all the time. There is nothing earnest about this play, at least on the surface.