The Outsider's Preponderant Ponderability
To all those who believe in the genius of Oscar Wilde, it would not be hard to reconsider the man's position as an outsider in his own society. That he was an Irish may be of material consequence and that Wilde's wit was hard to fit and the artist's flamboyance drew the chagrin of moral annoyance is a Victorian dilemma, but what remains common throughout history, is an outsider's predicament which starts off innocently and harmlessly but which stifles or is made to stifle by force by the so called 'authoritative' ambush. In his short life and career, Wilde wrote profusely. Born on 16 October, 1854, he was already a brilliant classical scholar in 1873. For his academic career at Oxford was remarkable, he could never have been as idle as he liked to pretend. Indeed he must have read voraciously. Even at this early age Wilde was a man of exceptionally wide culture, having reflected over the writings of Spinoza, Goethe, Hegel, Matthew Arnold, Emerson and Bau