Educative ethics in Fin de Siecle Thought with special reference to Educational Hermeneutics in the life and works of Oscar Wilde

Abstract

This study is intended to reflect an exploration of the relationship between social forces and the nature of narrativity, with specific reference to the life and works of Oscar Wilde.

It is acknowledged that Wilde is a representative figure of the 1890s, exemplifying all the contradictions of the decade. In his works nostalgia and respect for the past are juxtaposed with progressive thought and the Hegelian opposition of thesis and antithesis resonates throughout Wilde's most important work, whether it is creative or critical. In Hegelian dialect these are ultimately reconciled in the synthesis and it is this that forms the strategic pattern that underpins Wilde's thought.

The issues to be addressed in this research concern this conflict as it is expressed in Wilde's work, involving an exploration of the biographic nature of this work. The recognition that a biographic text is an interactive, contextual production between text, writer and reader will be elucidated as will the necessity of a hierarchical structure if the subject is to maintain a sense of order. By recognising that a life is never at an end and revealing the sense that Wilde's' life and works are joined to the past and to the future, this research will show how the reader is able to find meaning in others' experiences, so that they give shape to their own, acknowledging that the role of language, as a creative medium and a cognitive force, has an important part to play in the study of biographic methodology.

This research is anchored in the biographical methods promulgated by Denzin (1989), Dickinson and Erben (1995), Erben (1996) and MacIntyre (1985). These methods are used as a tool to explore the formative relationship between the social forces dominating European intellectual life during the last decades of the nineteenth century, the first decade of the twentieth century, the personal life of Oscar Wilde and the lives of those who influenced him.

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