Oscar Wilde: Reading and Discussion Questions

[Victorian Web Home —> Authors —> Aesthetes and Decadents —> Oscar Wilde —> Works]

"The Decay of Lying"

• The Appollonian Hillside or the Sordid Streets: Nature and the Mask in "The Decay of Lying"
• Seriousness and the Decadent Pose: Pater and Wilde
• Why Wilde is not a Genius
• Wilde and his Terms
• Wilde and Modernism/Postmodernism
• More Than Real: Art and Subjectivity in "The Decay of Lying"
• Wilde's Fictional Dialogue — Appropriate for Asserting Fact?
• Wilde's Characters
• Celebrity Sage Match: Wilde v. Beerbohm — or Satire Smoothes Rejection
• Wilde's Banter
• Wilde's Use of Dialogue in "The Decay of Lying"
• The Importance of Being Facetious
• The Art of Lying
• Oscar Wilde's Inverted Platonism
• Writing Assignments and Questions for The Importance of Being Earnest
• Thoroughly Modern Max / Oscar Night
• Wilde's Self-Conscious Contradiction
• Wilde's Wilde's Magical Metaphor-Proof
• Lying for Art's Sake
• Summary and Application of an Argument in "The Decay of Lying"
• Wilde's Vivian as a Personification of the Conceptual
• The Decay of Art Criticism in Wilde's Time
• Kant's aesthetic is refracted through Wilde's satire
• Questions and Contradictions in "The Decay of Lying"
• Wilde Plays Plato as Diogenes, Teaches Lying
• The Decay of Lying: Truth or Fallacy?
• The Art of Living
• Pervading Paradoxes
• Lie to me
• Wilde's Efforts to Prevent "The Decay of Lying"
• Life Learning from Art
• The Continuum of Realism and Art
• Wilde's Manipulative Methods

Plays

• "If thou hadst looked at me . . . ": Wilde's Picture of Salome

Poems

• Subjectivity of Detail versus Subjectivity of the Panoramic: Oscar Wilde's "Impression du Matin," "Les Balloons," and "Symphony in Yellow"
• Decadence and discontentment in Oscar Wilde's "Helas!"
• The Dance of Femininity in Wilde’s "Les Balloons"
• A glimpse at lust redeemed in Oscar Wilde's "The Harlot's House
• "Symphony in Yellow" — Painting a Picture
• The Need for Contrasts in Oscar Wilde's "The Harlot House"
• A painting in words: Wilde's "Impression du Matin"
• The Duration of Beauty in Wilde's "Les Ballons"
• Voyeurism: Oscar Wilde's "The Harlot's House"
• The Riddle of "The Sphinx": Difficult Questions and Troublesome Answers
• Entendre? Jano's faces in Oscar Wilde's "Pan — Double Villanelle"
• Love, Lust, and Lies in "The Harlot's House" by Oscar Wilde
• Pining for the Good Ol' Days
• The Sphinx and The Sensual Life

The Importance of Being Earnest

• Questions for Act 1

---

Last modified 26 April 2009