Cosmopolitan Criticism: Oscar Wilde's Philosophy of Art

Julia Prewitt Brown

University Press of Virginia, 1997 - Literary Criticism - 137 pages

CALLING OSCAR WILDE'S philosophy of art his "most elusive legacy," Brown attempts to define Wilde's conception of what art is and what it is not, of what the experience of art means in the modern world, and of the contradictory relations between the work of art and the sphere of everyday ethics. She traces the experimental character of Wilde's thought from its resonance in his own life through its development within the tradition of aesthetic philosophy, ultimately focusing on his sense of the equivocal and diminishing presence of art in the postindustrial world.

About the author

Julia Prewitt Brown is Associate Professor of English at Boston University

Bibliographic information

• Title: Cosmopolitan Criticism: Oscar Wilde's Philosophy of Art
• Author: Julia Prewitt Brown
• Publisher: University Press of Virginia, 1997
• ISBN: 081391728X, 9780813917283
• Length: 137 pages
• Subjects: Literary Criticism / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh