by Deaglán Ó Donghaile, Reader in Late Victorian Literature and Culture, Liverpool John Moores Universityn MSH's invited professor

Not only was he a committed believer in Walter Pater’s Aesthetic ideals, Oscar Wilde was also a firm supporter of political causes, including Irish independence, anarchism and revolutionary socialism. As a literary figure and public intellectual, he made his political views on British imperialism very clear from an early stage in his literary career, telling a Californian audience during his 1882 lecture tour of the United States that ‘with the coming of the English… art in Ireland came to an end, and it has had no existence for over seven hundred years. I am glad it has not, for art can not (sic) live and flourish under a tyrant.’ In expressing these opinions Wilde added a political edge to his Aesthetic theory that literature should serve as the ‘purest form of personal impression’ containing ‘its own reason for existing… in itself, and to itself, an end’. Literary critics continue to interpret Wilde as an effete and socially detached figure but this lecture will reveal how he incorporated these causes into his literary writings, which are saturated with subversive references to revolution.

Friday 7th February 2025, from 2pm until 4pm

Salle de réception
Building De1 - Level 3 - Room R.3.105
Avenue Antoine Depage 1
1000 Bruxelles

Free entrance

Contact : cristian.camara.outes@ulb.be