Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw Topic 51 PDF

For this official exam, we will develop the topic of “Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw,” number fifty-one in the official set of topics. To provide an accurate account of its content, we have always abided by the Order of September 9th, 1993, which regulates the official set of...

For this official exam, we will develop the topic of “Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw,” number fifty-one in the official set of topics. To provide an accurate account of its content, we have always abided by the Order of September 9th, 1993, which regulates the official set of topics for Primary and Secondary teachers’ exams. Therefore, this topic is organized in the following manner. We shall commence with an introduction that will cover the primary ideas related to the subject matter. In the second section, we will analyze the literary background of Ireland, with particular emphasis on the Irish Literary Renaissance and the Abbey Theatre. The third section will be dedicated to a comprehensive examination of Oscar Wilde, considering his contributions within biographical, historical, and literary contexts. Section four will focus on George Bernard Shaw, encompassing his life, works, and stylistic elements. We shall conclude with a summary and a compilation of the bibliographical references consulted in its preparation. Before delving into the topic analysis, we would like to highlight its significance for the reader. Oscar Wilde is regarded as a key literary figure for several reasons. He was an influential playwright, poet, and novelist during the late 19th century, celebrated for his clever wit, satirical style, and profound examinations of social and moral themes. George Bernard Shaw is well-known for his transformative impact on comedic drama. Apart from being a literary critic, he was also a major British socialist. Shaw's most commercially successful work, Pygmalion, was later adapted into the beloved Broadway musical My Fair Lady. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925. Moreover, we must acknowledge their connection with English as a foreign language through graded readers such as My Fair Lady, The Canterville Ghost, and The Picture of Dorian Gray, among others. We will start studying this literary period and these two prominent playwrights without much further ado. Introduction Ireland has made a disproportionate contribution to world literature for a comparatively small island. James Joyce, Oscar Wilde, and Ireland's four winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature: William Butler Yeats, George Bernard Shaw, Samuel Beckett, and Seamus Heaney. The Irish literary tradition is old and significant. The 19th century was a critical and challenging period for theatre. On the one hand, the crisis affected both plays and stages. On the other hand, the growth of two new genres, the essay and the novel, also decreased the importance of theatre. In the middle of this chaotic situation in the theatre, two critical figures appeared: Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw. Literary Background To develop this section, we have consulted Richard Bradford et al. (2020). Irish Theater The history of Irish theatre begins with the Gaelic Irish tradition. The conquest destroyed much of the literature in that Celtic language, except for a few manuscripts and fragments, such as the Book of Fermoy. The history of Irish theatre in the familiar sense begins with the rise of the English administration in Dublin at the start of the 17th century. Over the next 400 years, this small country would make a disproportionate contribution to English drama. Many Dublin-based theatres developed links with their London equivalents, and performers and productions from the British capital frequently appeared on the Irish stage. However, most Irish playwrights, from William Congreve to George Bernard Shaw, needed to leave their native island to establish themselves. At the beginning of the 20th century, theatres and theatre companies dedicated to staging Irish plays and developing indigenous writers, directors, and performers began to emerge. Irish Literary Renaissance At the end of the 19th century, a new movement became apparent: the Irish Literary Renaissance. In the 1890s, two Irish dramatists, Oscar Wilde and Bernard Shaw, emerged. Perhaps they were the last of their kind, for a new Irish theatre emerged as part of the Irish Literary Renaissance. ‘The Gaelic Revival’ centered around William Butler Yeats, the greatest poet Ireland has produced. On the other hand, the most outstanding name of the movement in drama was that of John Millington Synge, best known for his play The Playboy of the Western World. Others were Lennox Robinson, best known for his political play The Lost Leader (1918) and his comedy The White-headed Boy (1916); T. C. Murray, with Spring Horizon (1937); and Sean O’Casey, with The Shadow of a Gunman (1923) and Juno and Paycock (1924). The Abbey Theater The Abbey Theatre, also known as the National Theatre of Ireland, opened on 27 December 1904 in Dublin, Republic of Ireland. In its early years, the theatre was closely associated with the writers of the Irish Literary Revival, many of whom were involved in its founding and most of whom had plays staged there. The Abbey served as a nursery for many of the leading Irish playwrights and actors of the 20th century.  It is now time to begin studying Oscar Wilde, one of the two major authors in this paper. We have referred to Matthew Sturgis's Oscar Wilde: A Life (2021) to provide accurate information on him. Oscar Wilde There is a strong temptation to treat Oscar Wilde's work lightly due to his flamboyant and notorious lifestyle, often better known than his writings. Wilde posed as an aesthete and a decadent. Nevertheless, in his plays, short stories, novels, essays, and poems, he advocated for reform through social critique and challenged Victorian morality through his work and lifestyle. Works in Biographical and Historical Context Influenced by a creative, flamboyant mother, Wilde was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1854. At the time, Ireland was part of the United Kingdom and controlled by the British, outside of the six counties of the north that were predominantly British and Protestant—commonly known as Ulster. Long-standing tensions existed between the British and Irish, as the Irish agitated for more control and home rule. Wilde's family was Anglo-Irish, and he was raised a Protestant. Wilde's childhood appears to have been happy, if unconventional. He had an older brother, Willie, and a younger sister, Isola, who died at age eight in 1867. The family was devastated by Isola's death. Wilde regularly visited her grave and wrote the poem “Requiescat” (1881) in her memory. Early Literary Attention For three years, Wilde was educated in the classics at Trinity College, Dublin, where he began to attract public attention through the eccentricity of his writing and lifestyle. At the age of twenty-three, Wilde entered Magdalen College, Oxford. In 1878, he was awarded the Newdigate Prize for his poem “Ravenna” (1878). Wilde published his well-received Poems in 1881. He lectured in the United States and England and applied unsuccessfully for a position as a school inspector. In 1884, he married Constance Lloyd, and their children were born in 1885 and 1886. He encouraged his wife's political activity, including her involvement in the women's liberation and suffrage movements. Challenging Social Norms Wilde was also a reformer who supported women's liberation. In 1887, he reconstituted the editorship of Lady's World: A Magazine of Fashion and Society. His first popular successes in prose were fairy tales: The Happy Prince and Other Tales (1888) and The House of Pomegranates (1892).  Wilde became a practicing homosexual in 1886. He believed this subversion of the Victorian moral code was the impulse for his writing. Wilde considered himself a criminal who challenged society by creating scandals, and his works often explore the criminal mentality. “Lord Arthur Savile's Crime,” from Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories (1891), is a comic treatment of murder and its successful concealment. The original version of The Picture of Dorian Gray, published in Lippincott's Magazine, emphasized the murder of the painter Basil Hallward by Dorian as the turning point in Dorian's disintegration. Dramatic Success Between 1892 and 1895, Wilde was an active dramatist, writing what he identified as “trivial comedies for serious people.” His plays were popular because their dialogue was clever and often concise, relying on puns and elaborate word games for their effects. Lady Windermere's Fan was produced in 1892, A Woman of No Importance in 1893, and An Ideal Husband and The Importance of Being Earnest in 1895. 1889 to 1895 were prolific for Wilde, but during these years, he led an increasingly double life that ended in his imprisonment in 1895. This secret life was also featured increasingly in his work, especially in the novella The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891). This novella's themes were also an example of the aesthetic movement of which Wilde was a part. This late nineteenth-century European art movement centered on the doctrine that art existed for the sake of its beauty alone. Imprisonment On March 2, 1895, Wilde initiated a suit for criminal libel against the Marquis of Queensberry, who had objected to Wilde's relationship with his handsome young son, Lord Alfred Douglas. When his suit failed, countercharges followed, and after a sensationalistic public trial, Wilde was convicted of homosexual misconduct and sentenced to two years in prison and hard labor. Prison transformed Wilde's experience as radically as had his 1886 introduction to homosexuality. “De Profundis” is a moving letter to his former lover, which Wilde wrote in prison. It was first published as a whole in 1905. His theme was that he was not unlike other men and was a scapegoat. “The Ballad of Reading Gaol” (1898) was written after his release. After his release from prison in May 1897, Wilde went to France. There, he attempted to write a play in his earlier witty style, but his efforts failed. He died in Paris on November 30, 1900. Reaction to Victorian Values The Importance of Being Earnest, Wilde's last and most brilliant play, is a hysterical comedy and a serious critique of Victorian society. In using farce to comment upon serious issues, Wilde anticipates modern writers such as Samuel Beckett. The Victorian upper classes are presented as enclosed characters more intent on the social surface in a world where form replaces emotion. Victorian stiffness and hypocrisy in marriage, education, and religion are all critiqued, but always through the sparkle of Wilde's biting satirical wit. In Poems (1881), Wilde experimented with form and touched on many themes he would develop as a social and cultural reformer in his later works. Although he criticized the false glamour of Victorian upper-class society, he was also attracted to that world. He viewed Victorian ideals of art, reflected in the ornate and orderly decor of upper—and middle-class homes, as a sham. During his aesthetic phase, he reformed rigid notions of art and decorated his home and person as exhibits of this new modern art. Finally, we will examine George Bernard Shaw. We have referred to Michael Holroyd— Bernard Shaw: The One-Volume. Definitive Edition. (2005) George Bernard Shaw Life Shaw was born on July 26, 1856, in Dublin, Ireland. He was introduced to music and art early in his childhood and became interested in a career as a writer. At age fifteen, he began work as a rent collector for a Dublin land agent, which he did for five years. His experiences on the job became the inspiration for the events in his first drama, Widowers' Houses (1892). He studied social sciences and was influenced by Marxist economics. In 1884, he joined the Fabian Society, a group of English intellectuals dedicated to gradually introducing Socialism in England. When his career as a novelist stalled, he turned to playwriting. In 1898, six of his plays were published as Plays: Pleasant and Unpleasant, which catapulted Shaw into a critical and popular success. His reputation was only repaired when his celebrated play Saint Joan appeared in 1923. The play was immediately recognized as a masterpiece, earning the playwright a Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925. He died on November 2, 1950. Plays Bernard Shaw’s plays are not simply expressing his political and social thoughts, ideas, or opinions. In some sense, only two early plays can be considered specifically socialist: Widowers’ Houses and Mrs Warrens’ Profession. Shaw put together the comedy of manners and the drama of ideas. His gift to English drama is that of a great word artist. Another characteristic of Shaw’s plays is his characters' artificial and cold presentation.  Unpleasant and Pleasant Plays (1898). Shaw used the name ‘unpleasant’ because unpleasant plays force the spectator to face unpleasant acts. Shaw followed his unpleasant plays with four pleasant ones. Between the unpleasant plays, we underline Widowers’ Houses (1892), attacking slum landlordism, was the result, and had two performances in 1892.; it was written as a response to Ibsen’s A Doll‘s House and Mrs. Warrens’ Profession (1893), in which he shows the lack of opportunities women have to be independent. Among the pleasant plays, we underline Arms and the Man (1894), in which Shaw makes fun of love and war, and Candida, where he deals with the social roles of man and woman. Captain Brassbound’s Conversion (1900). In this play, the voice and good sense are set in the mouth of an aristocratic Englishwoman who is nevertheless a delightful figure of fun. It is a sermon against various sorts of folly masquerading as duty and justice. Still, scarcely a speech does not exhibit characters or motives in an entertaining light. The Devil’s Disciple (1901) is a melodrama in the American Revolution. It is a hero Dick Dudgeon, the black sheep of the family, who is represented as heroically taking the place of a minister whom the English propose to hang. His motive is not romantic but public and impersonal. Moreover, he acts spontaneously and at the command of some unquestioned imperative, so this virtue is seen less as an achievement than a profession. Caesar and Cleopatra is Shaw’s first great play. It is an outstandingly successful study of kindness, acted in 1906, though it was written before that. Man and Superman (1903). This play is a debate on the relationship between the sexes. He presents us with Hell as a place dedicated entirely to pleasure. In this play and others, we find the concept of ‘individuality,’ as it is man's subordination to a superior ideal. In Shaw’s case, it was humanity's biological and moral progress. In John Bull’s Other Island (1904), Shaw mocks an Englishman like the English mock Irish men on the London Stage. Major Barbara (1905). Its heroine, Barbara, ranks next to Joan of Arc among Shaw’s women, and some scenes are more moving than any Shaw had hitherto allowed himself to write. On analysis of the play, it may lack intellectual coherence, but it gains in dramatic vitality from the freshness of the doubts behind it. The Doctor’s Dilemma (1906): This is a successful light satire on the medical profession. Pygmalion (1913) is a comedy about a flower girl trained by a Phonetician to speak like a lady. It is a satire of the English Class System. The play's rich human content has made it a favorite with a broad public and has achieved success in both film and musical versions. It is a masterpiece of comedy. Heartbreak House (1920) is a social drama about the boredom and frustration of a cultivated and sophisticated upper-class social group.  Back to Methuselah (1921) consists of five linked plays in which Shaw expounds his conception of Creative Evolution. Shaw’s drawing out of this theme into a long dramatic sequence is an astonishing feat, and its conclusion is impressively wholly unexpected in a work of speculative fantasy. Saint Joan (1923) is Shaw’s great play. It achieves what he had always sought: the fusion of high seriousness with high comedy. The life and death of Joan of Arc are made of a perennial conflict between human institutions and human inspiration. And Shaw is absolute for the individual's inner voice as the instrument through which evolutionary change accomplishes itself in the world as we know it. Style Shaw is regarded as the greatest English dramatist of the modern age, and his contribution to British theatre is considered second only to that of William Shakespeare. By rejecting outmoded theatrical conventions and championing realism and social commentary in his work, critics contend Shaw succeeded in revolutionizing British drama. He has been credited with creating the “theatre of ideas,” in which plays explore such issues as sexism, sexual equality, socioeconomic divisions, the effects of poverty, and philosophical and religious theories. Moreover, his innovative dramas are thought to have paved the way for later symbolist drama and the Theatre of the Absurd. Shaw is acclaimed as the most significant British dramatist of the modern era. Topic Implications The content of this topic is a perfect excuse to introduce sociocultural values in the classroom. We should use the authors’ productions through graded readers to exploit different issues. There are plenty of graded readers by the two authors in the topic such as The Happy Prince, The Canterville Ghost, The Picture of Dorian, and Pygmalion (My Fair Lady). Through activities like debates, we can also explore other themes in the topic, such as people’s behaviour and their own choice of private life, and touch on cross-curricular topics such as respect and tolerance. According to LOMLOE 3/2020, which regulates the Spanish Education System, and ________ (autonomous community decree), where the curricula for CSE and Bachillerato are established in _________, this topic mainly highlights sociocultural aspects. Students must be familiar with the culture whose language they are learning. Hence, this topic would be of great help. In that sense, it would also be connected with a minimum content block of ‘interculturality’ found in Royal Decree 217/2022. The content of this topic also promotes cultural awareness and expression, and it is connected with competence descriptors CAE1, CAE2, and CAE3, following Royal Decree 217/2022. Conclusion In conclusion, it has been a pleasure to reflect on the notable contributions of Wilde and Shaw to Irish literature. Both Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw emerged as the most influential playwrights of 19th-century English drama. While Wilde and Shaw significantly shaped their time's literary and cultural landscape, their approaches to writing and views on societal issues diverged. Wilde emphasized aesthetics and individualism, whereas Shaw focused on political engagement and social reform. Despite their contrasting backgrounds, Wilde and Shaw shared common ground in their criticism of the societal artificialities and hypocrisies prevalent in their time. They both explicitly challenged the social conventions dominating their society and championed the individual resisting an oppressive environment. In this light, we can view Wilde and Shaw as the ‘dandies’ of their era. They revitalized the 'comedy of manners,' bringing about a true revolution in British drama. Finally, we will provide the bibliographical references consulted for the elaboration of this topic: Bradford, R., et al. (2020). The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Contemporary British and Irish Literature. John Wiley & Sons. Sturgis, M. (2021). Oscar Wilde: A Life. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Holroyd, M. (2005). Bernard Shaw: The One-Volume Definitive Edition. W.W. Norton.