2.1 Oscar Wilde: De Profundis Flashcards
Genre
aestheticism
Mode
autobiography
Audience
people interesed in his story, the lgbt community
Purpose
to inform audience of his state of mind and to show pride in his sexuality
Context
Oscar Wilde:
- highly educated
- playwright, novelist, poet
- described as having “brilliant wit”
- flamboyant
- imprisoned sue to his sexuality
Voice
- reflective
- subjective
- personal
- cathartic
“De Profundis”
“out of the depths”
- symbolic of how he feels out of place
- secrets/confessions
- Latin, shows he’s educated and intellectual
“I want” “I shall”
modal verbs
- person pronouns
- autobiographical convention
- a desire
- hopeful
“When my father sent me to Oxford, and when society sent me to prison”
sibilance
- suggesting going to prison is the same as going to uni
- he had no control in both
- contrast between Oxford and jail emphasises power of society to judge people
- makes the reader reflect on themselves and their morals
“I will not say that prison is the best thing that could have happened to me”
passive voice
- understatement
- suggesting there might be some goodness about going to prison
“I turned the good things of my life to evil and the evil things of my life to good”
paradox, antithesis, parallel phrasing
- he is in prison through his own decisions
- shows internal battle he has been forced to overcome in isolation
- self hatred, intends to learn from this
- “evil”: abstract noun
“Maimed, marred and incomplete”
list of three
- emphasises his passion for the issue
- sense of optimism, he can embrace the experience and won’t succumb
“I would always be haunted by an intolerable sense of disgrace”
metaphor, polysyballic lexis
- intellectual, emphasises suffering
- needs self accepting
Semantic field: “ruinous” “fatal” “intolerable” “disgrace” “haunted”
- shows his bitterness about his time still remains but he is unwilling to forget his experience
- doing so would make him ashamed of himself
“The music of daybreak and the silence of great nights”
natural imagery and antithesis
- prison has changed his view on the world
- he appreciates nature more
- he misses the joy of natural life
