Intentions (eBook), Oscar Wilde

Description

Wilde at his sharpest and most subversive. Intentions gathers four dazzling essays that define the creed of Aestheticism and turn Victorian morality upside-down. In “The Decay of Lying,” Wilde’s alter-ego Vivian insists that truth ruins art; in “The Critic as Artist,” he argues that criticism can be more creative than creation; “Pen, Pencil and Poison” turns a murderer into a muse; and “The Truth of Masks” transforms Shakespearean costuming into philosophy.Witty, ironic, and defiantly queer in spirit, Intentions remains a manifesto for beauty, artifice, and intellectual rebellion. Whether read as satire or prophecy, these essays prove Wilde’s belief that “the telling of beautiful untrue things is the proper aim of art.”