/lit/ - Literature

>>20250524
Wilde wouldn’t be such a great writer without his degenerate life experience.
Twink prostitutes would get fucked by a hundred different perverts regardless.

Similar thing happened to me in early woke hysteria days. said the same thing about Burroughs... "kinda messed up how this guy fucked so many boys in South America" and got furious looks and dismissive answers, I never even got the homophobia angle to way later. I'm far better at telling what can and can't be said among those types now.

>>20250547
You had a woke phase? Come on, man

>>20250524
>student in the front points out that this man had evidence he fucked 13-15 year olds while he was in his late 40's against him
The age of consent had only been raised like several years before the trial. People back then only cared about the fact he was fucking males. They didn't care about the fact they were minors. They didn't have the same moral standards.

>>20250547
It's not really a woke thing because the woke types are very keen to cancel the predatory dead old white dudes

>>20250524
My modern lit professor once told us during a lecture that ezra pound 'told a few jokes' over the radio, which was why he was imprisoned.

>>20250549
No way maaaaaaaan... I meant it happened in the early woke days before 2016, when Tumblr-derived outrage politics started becoming popular.

>>20250554
>It's not really a woke thing because the woke types are very keen to cancel the predatory dead old white dudes
Less so when they're homosexuals. Even the Foucault cancellation's never really took off. Not like Penguin will axe his books or anything.

>>20250563
I was delving into Mutualism a bit during that time

>>20250555

>>20250569
Mind you I didn't escape Ancapistan until my early 30s

You can't divorce the work from the author?

>>20250567
Not literary but I know a guy online who stans Jimmy Savile

>>20250555
Based.

>>20250582
Maybe personally, but not academically. If you're learning about an author, personal and historical context are both important to understanding their work.

>>20250593
Ultimately when you are considering the influences and attitudes that the work was produced out of, yes that is important, but I mean when viewing it as a work in itself.
It doesn't make sense to say 'this book is bad because the author fucked kids' or especially 'this book is bad because the author would then go on to fuck kids'. You should be able to repudiate the actions of the author in history while still considering a book on its own merits.
I find it ironic how this board constantly moans about 'cancelling' authors and the school of resentment but do the exact same thing in threads like these.

>>20250601
I agree, and in op's case I don't think kiddy diddling is all that relevant to Wilde's work. It's just that divorcing the author from their work entirely is a fool's errand.

>>20250611
I see your point and agree with you.

>Wilde had sex with 13 - 15 year old
Based
>boys
Cringe

gays are evil

>>20250708
The fact that Wilde wrote the Picture of Dorian grey proves that he knew it

When will Socrates be cancelled?

proof?

>>20250524
based wilde

>>20250714
He was made to drink hemlock, can't cancel a man more than that until nerds started with the Greek.

>>20250555
based man with based opinions

>>20250524
>then says it doesnt matter
based professor dunking on moralfags

>>20250767
It was a woman, which makes it all the more based.

>>20250524
Never happened but this is such standard libshit cope
>spends two minites trying to 'add context'

Wilde is pretty cute

>>20250524
>Charles Gill (prosecuting): What is "the love that dare not speak its name"?

>Wilde: "The love that dare not speak its name" in this century is such a great affection of an elder for a younger man as there was between David and Jonathan, such as Plato made the very basis of his philosophy, and such as you find in the sonnets of Michelangelo and Shakespeare. It is that deep spiritual affection that is as pure as it is perfect. It dictates and pervades great works of art, like those of Shakespeare and Michelangelo, and those two letters of mine, such as they are. It is in this century misunderstood, so much misunderstood that it may be described as "the love that dare not speak its name", and on that account of it I am placed where I am now. It is beautiful, it is fine, it is the noblest form of affection. There is nothing unnatural about it. It is intellectual, and it repeatedly exists between an older and a younger man, when the older man has intellect, and the younger man has all the joy, hope and glamour of life before him. That it should be so, the world does not understand. The world mocks at it, and sometimes puts one in the pillory for it.

>>20250524
Is a good academic someone who is quick to make moral judgements or does he suspend his urge to judge so that he might understand?

>>20250798
ngl this is pretentious as fuck, like everyone thinks that their personal specific proclivities are really profound and divine, just say you like boys

>>20250582
No, I don't think so, I think most works that are deep and personal to the author (all good quality books) are the results of opinions and ideas they have thought. When you write you are pouring every bit of your mind into the work you create even if you don't realize it. Homos liking younger guys is so fucking prevalent in gay literature, It's absolutely relevant to his work

>>20250811
[men] liking younger [people] is so fucking prevalent in [...] literature

>>20250807
>bro..you cant judge him for being a boy rapist, you have to suspend your judgement until you FULLY UNDERSTAND

you people are actual subhumans and this attitude is responsible for virtually every problem humanity faces

>>20250524
>why do people just ignore that
Why would I give a shit? Moralfags are gay (intellectually as well as sexually) and also reddit.

>>20250816
you may not realize it yet but you will never be a woman

>>20250854
you may not realize it yet but you will never be a woman

>>20250839
It's literally the opposite. You moralists are always justifying the atrocities you commit on moral grounds. Those who are a little less eager to judge are far more prudent and reasonable.

>>20250869
>kill all boy rapists or communists or what have you
>omg you moralists and your atrocities!
top zoz, its self defense not an atrocity

>>20250582
It's entirely possible, but the entirety of Wilde studies is built around the opposite. He's studied as one huge pile of social commentary.

>>20250873
>>kill all communists
I endorse this message

>>20250873
You're only lending credence to my point. I don't know why I waste my time interacting with lost causes like you. You're trapped in your little moral world.

>>20250808
this.

>>20250900
morals are based, purity is based, fucking twinks in a back alley is not. why do degenerate cunnyfags and boyfuckers think having morals is a stain on MY character?

>>20250921
>morals are based, purity is based
Actually both of those are very cringe.

>>20250900
>You're only lending credence to my point
good, I have no problems with you claiming that I use my moral compass to guide me to judge and eliminate boy rapists, and you are also helping to prove my point that you are a subhuman by desperately trying to defend boy rapist from judgement using pseudo-intellectualism as a cloak, proving my point that such """"atrocities""""" are justified as you are evil and present a real and present threat to society.
>..but bro, you cant rush to judgement, boy rapists might not pose a danger to society
kek

>>20250930
if flies could talk they'd wax poetic about eating shit too. kill yourself

It's Boise who liked them that young. Wilde liked what would be now of age twinks. The risque part of Boise and Wilde's relationship for Wilde was that Boise was still in university when he met him-- uni students were considered not yet men. Boise was into even younger kids, but he never got into a defamation suit over it and never got criminally charged. The rent boys Wilde did get convicted of would be of legal age if the court case was current.

>>20250921
>morals are based, purity is based, fucking twinks in a back alley is not
Start with the Greeks. Fucking twinks is virtuous

>>20250714
That boy is very handsome

>>20250555
I think he was banking on woketards being too lazy to look up his bio.

>>20250524
is this what arthoes classes are in college? and they pay tens of thousands for this retarded crap?
based banks looting women and low t men

>>20250524
Homosexuality and pederasty are the same thing.

>>20251311
you WILL PAY roasties' loans
and YOU WILL BE HAPPY

>>20250524
>victorian lit class
>putting a professor in the position of having to defend sexual relations below the current age of consent in today's cancel culture when his position is highly vulnerable to it
Frankly he should have just ended the lecture there instead of making any comment on it at all. We here all know all the dirty secrets about homos and pedos and horny teens, but the professor can't explain that when someone's probably already recording his lecture.
>So why are people so defensive of this? He was a preening sodomite and fucked street urchin gay hookers, why do people just ignore that?
On the one hand, you know exactly why people are defensive of that kind of behavior. As to why people ignore it, it has very little bearing on the literary value of his works. A s a sophisticated reader, you should be able to separate the author and his works, and if you can't do that, you should just refrain from commenting on the works entirely, because you're overly biased.

>>20250524
I don't care that he fucked young adolescent boys. Reading what he wrote doesn't signify an endorsement of his character or make you his friend. Besides, he's dead.
Go back to twitter you sjw cancel-happy faggot.

>>20251324
No.

>>20251572
Yes.

>>20250524
That's not the only thing they ignore. He also converted to Catholicism on his deathbed, renouncing the degenerate life that his fans admire him for.

>>20250931
Based

>>20250946
ive still yet to see evidence that wilde fucked 13-15 year olds. People just throw that out there. People call shakespeare a pedo for the sonnets, when the man is clearly over 18

>>20250524
What kind of a dumbass professor doesn't just reply: "Read the Death of the Author, n00b" to this kind of provocation and continue with his lecture?

>>20250524
I'm anti-pedo, but if you're going to go after all "dead white males" that were pedos and degenerates you'd end up only reading modern day black women or some shit.

>>20252367
There have been multiple posts like yours in this thread now and I don't get how this stuff flies over your head. What OP is describing is not a proffessor innocently talking about the works of an auther when, suddenly, he is assailed by exclaimations of "this guy was a nonce!" and then the entire class goes into a murmur and plead, "please stop talking about this guy, prof". Neither is the proffessor neutrally and in a matter-of-fact manner speaking about the life and person of Wilde. He is speaking about the trail, and very likely taking a sympathetic tone. He wants to educate his students on the great homophobic tragedy that was his sentencing. Faced with that, it is entierly reasonable to point out that the author indeed was a horrible criminal who deserved what he got. Yet the proffessor, when hearing this, doesn't, say, acknowledge this and move on, as would any normal person, but digs his heels in because he specifically wants Wilde as a victim-hero. He wants that narrative.

>>20252410
>the author indeed was a horrible criminal who deserved what he got.
your opinion

>>20252420
Not him, and wouldn't convict Wilde on today's laws, but Wilde was dumb af to bring it before the court. The libel suit centred in the word sodomy, and if a jury thought he had committed an act of sodomy on anyone, including his wife, he would have been in the same conundrum.
Further, he chose to go to prison. All his friends were ready to whisk him off to France after the libel trial and before the sodomy arrest, but his mother told him to stay and go to prison to show how cruel British justice was, because she was an insane nationalist.
He is a large part of his own demise, both in allowing himself to be goaded by Queensbury and Douglas into bringing the libel case, and then in following his equally crazy mother's wishes to remain in England to be arrested.

>>20252289
>Wilde took a key out of his pocket and showed me into a tiny apartment of two rooms…The youths followed him, each of them wrapped in a burnous that hid his face. Then the guide left us and Wilde sent me into the further room with little Mohammed and shut himself up in the other with the [other boy]. Every time since then that I have sought after pleasure, it is the memory of that night I have pursued. […] My joy was unbounded, and I cannot imagine it greater, even if love had been added. How should there have been any question of love? How should I have allowed desire to dispose of my heart? No scruple clouded my pleasure and no remorse followed it. But what name then am I to give the rapture I felt as I clasped in my naked arms that perfect little body, so wild, so ardent, so sombrely lascivious? For a long time after Mohammed had left me, I remained in a state of passionate jubilation, and though I had already achieved pleasure five times with him, I renewed my ecstasy again and again, and when I got back to my room in the hotel, I prolonged its echoes until morning.
Gide, If It Die, 1935

>>20252474
Gide talked a lot of shit about his time with Wilde. He wanted to brag he was the first to introduce Wilde to homosexuality. He was extremely pissed off when he found out Wilde was introduced by a gay leaf. Gide was definitely into the younger sort though.

>>20250567
Boys are able to give consent earlier. Foucault did nothing wrong.

People who feel the need to pipe up about how some author did le despicable thing are the worst. Constant raised eyebrow and crossed arms

>>20252493
Wilde was a pedophile. Dodgson was a pedophile. Poe was a pedophile. Byron was a pedophile. Most authors were pedophiles. That's not a moral position, just a statement of fact.
>>20252505
He was a sexpat.

>>20250524
Read the Satyricon and other Fragments of Petronious. Twink-fancy is based.

>>20252493
The eternal leaf.

>>20251582
>converted to catholicism
>renounced life of degeneracy
A-anon I...

>>20250524
Wilde’s just a second-rate Baron Corvo

>>20250582
In Wilde's case it actually makes Portrait of Dorian that much more poignant.

>>20250714
Socrates and Plato condemned pederasty, the idea that they were sodomites is propaganda.

>>20250555
Unironically true

>>20250582
You can. But if you're talking about the author, you're talking about the author.

>>20250524
Faggots are literally sperging out because Florida won’t teach kindergartners queer sex

>>20250555
it's called we do a little trolling

>>20253123
all you need to do to make gays and transvestites go nuclear is put up boundaries between them and children

>>20253018
Socrates ‘condemnation’ of pederasty is like a pedo who says he’s against it but walks around in public hanging out with children, talking openly about getting boners from them, talking about what he finds attractive in a child, and quoting pedophile poems approvingly

>>20250930
Imagine being this based

>>20250798
Sounds like the bullshit any guy spews when he's horny for something.

>>20250714
Projection.
Pederasty wasnt sexual

>>20250798
>It is beautiful, it is fine, it is the noblest form of affection. There is nothing unnatural about it.
Me when a girl acts like I'm disgusting for asking her to piss in my mouth

>>20252493
No Wilde thought he introduced Gide to homosexuality. It's the other way round.

>>20253510
>b-but they just want to marry

>>20250798
All that to say he loved to exploit poor twinks to satisfy his debauchery.

>>20250524
the modern liberal bases their entire ideology on contradictions far straker then even the most fanatic 90s creationist would accept
think about that mind set and se how well it explains the behavior of people you deal with on a day to day basis.

>>20250554
>The age of consent had only been raised like several years before the trial. People back then only cared about the fact he was fucking males. They didn't care about the fact they were minors. They didn't have the same moral standards.
But if we judge things by the moral standards of their time how can we claim any action taken by a popular majority from segregation to the holocaust was bad?
You either believe in absolute standards or you dont
and if you dont you have nothing to appeal to when arguing eithics to someone coming from a different premise.

>>20250714
likely already has happened dude
(if it hasnt its just a function of the modern left not reading fucking books)
they have ENDLESS fuckin testaments regarding the evils medevil kings and american presidents for their "missoginy"
that shit would be perfectly up their alley

>>20250807
Fair point,
but how is emotinally (and irrationally) denying the validity of an ethical critique speaking to academic rigor either?
A serious intellectually honest person scholar would admit wilde was by modern standards a pedophile
and yet from that STILL make the uncomfortable assertion that a pedophile can infact (as they can) speak truthfully or meaningfully in certian areas.
But to do so is to be accept man as flawed and virtue to be capable of originating in such flawed men; a state which is unconcievable for the protestantism modern liberalism is founded on.
>"A good tree bears good fruit"
>"An evil treee bears evil fruit"
Without humility such thoughts inevitably lead to spiraling Nosophobia

>>20250555
What was the actual situation? I've not heard of this before, bros

>>20254474

God I love this slut

>>20250524
>read dorian gray
>think it's pretty fucking gay
>find out that it was censored for being gay
>look up the uncensored excerpts
>REALLY fucking gay
>makes the moby dick chapter about the sperm crushing look like the most heterosexual thing in literature
>some anon tells me that even the uncensored version was censored originally too and that it was even MORE gay before the publishers degayified it

Is wilde peak homo, bros?

>>20254496

The even more gay version's out there and annotated, if you'd like.

I'm genuinely astonished what Wilde got away with. A gay romantic tragedy written in the fucking Victorian Era's absolutely not something I'd expect possible.

>>20251562
There actually is a "who cares" motion -- the demurrer.

>>20254441

Ages of consent aren't based on absolute moral standards. They're based on "good enough" standards, as are most laws really.

>>20251090
Explain it to me logically, what is appealing about sucking a grown man's penis?

>>20254518
>Ages of consent aren't based on absolute moral standards.
Disagree
and can prove the validity of my opinion objectively (if you give a shit)

>>20254571
>Disagree
>and can prove the validity of my opinion objectively (if you give a shit)
I wanna see it, my dear Socrates.
Nothing would please me more.

>>20250582
if modern publishers and agents can't, why should I?

>>20250524
John Ruskin was even worse.

>>20250798
>wordswordswordswordwordswordswordswordswordswords
Wilde if he leftist

>tfw you fuck kids lmao
>bottom text
Wild if he right

>>20254571

How? How is the age of consent being 18 objectively better than it being 17, 16, 19, 20, 21, or some other number?

I don't want to legalize Michael Jacksoning, but clearly not all laws need to be based on objective principles when "doing the job well enough" is significantly more sensible.

>>20254314
>Pederasty wasnt sexual
THIS!!!!

>>20254441
>>20254571
I personally do not believe in absolute moral standards and don't think there is good reason to. Human morals have fluctuated so much over history it's impossible to reconcile with belief in knowable objective morals unless you believe that man is fallen and needs the assistance of divine revelation to know good from bad. But even within a single religious tradition, we have irreconcilable moral views. For most of its history the Christian religion approved of married intercourse with 12 year old girls and burned boys at the stake for being buggered by men. Now of course most Christians would be horrified at that fact. But if we accept this as a moral improvement, what is responsible for it? The development was not a religious one. It was not informed by new revelation. Social opinion shifted largely due to material changes in the lives of ordinary people. Do we hold people in the past responsible for not having modern day morals, then? How? Etc. etc.

Anyway, this is obviously not a new problem. The ancients (particularly sceptics like Cicero and Sextus Empiricus, who doubted the validity of all systematic philosophies) discussed it at length.

>>20254496
>>20254508
What? There was nothing gay about Dorian Grey, what the fuck are you retards talking about, I'm 100% sure you haven't even read the book.

>>20255084
>There was nothing gay about Dorian Grey

>>20255092
So you have no argument or evidence, got it.

>>20255103
Basil has a crush on Dorian.

>>20255045
>But if we accept this as a moral improvement, what is responsible for it? The development was not a religious one.
lewl peak midwit
it's always amusing to me how the biggest fedora tippers are the ones who least understand evolution, they are Creationists when it comes to morality

>>20250931
>>20250921
If morality exists everything is permissible.

>>20255199
What do you mean?

>>20255199
I think you misunderstood me. When I said "the development wasn't a religious one" I wasn't saying that to denigrate religion. I was just saying the source of modern age of consent laws isn't grounded in religious metaphysics

>>20255212
>I was just saying the source of modern age of consent laws isn't grounded in religious metaphysics
It clearly is though, without religion we could never have arrived here.

>>20254353
If you trust Gide's account over every other gay man in his circle, sure. The problem being Gide can't even agree with himself.

>>20255199
>the ones who least understand evolution, they are Creationists when it comes to morality
Do you think ALL our contemporary morals are objectively better than those from the past?

I, for my part, think the ancient people were into something more than we actually concede.
Most our in force morals are completelly full of shit.

>>20255212
>the source of modern age of consent laws isn't grounded in religious metaphysics
What is its source then?

>>20255224
>>20255243
In the sense that modern liberal ethics is derivative from Christianity, sure. That's not the specific point I was making, however. What I meant was, age of consent didn't emerge out of a Christian revelation rubric. For most of Christian history children could be considered culpable for having sex with adults. There was no new revelation that said "this isn't good." I also don't know about the "we never could have arrived here without Christianity" claim. Most cultures have prohibited sex with preadolescent children. The step to prohibiting sex with pubescent and post-pubescent children isn't really far off from that, and it makes sense for that new standard to develop in a social context (like post-industrial modernity) where children no longer need to take on adult social roles as quickly as they used to, and where people have children at ages much later than they used to.

>>20254475
That was the situation. Ezra was just having some fun and golems went crazy.

>>20254475
He was a Fascist and did numerous broadcasts in Italy on the topic of Fascism during WW2 which reached America. Sometimes he did movie reviews, sometimes he called America a puppet of the Jews.

>>20255253
>sex with pubescent and post-pubescent CHILDREN
...

Your language is really loaded; I can see your bias from miles away.

Teenagers have sex!
Get over it.

Don't you think a better question is:
What kind of people are they having sex with?
Do you think TWO teenagers having sex (with the risk of having a baby and ruining their lives and that of their offspring) is really the better social arrange we could come up with after millenia of thinking?

>>20250547
>"kinda messed up how this guy fucked so many boys in South America"
How is it messed up? The guy wrote about need being the face of evil and routinely rejoindered "Wouldn't you?"
>>20250611
>divorcing the author from their work entirely is a fool's errand.
Hmmm, dunno about that. Hemingway's cock was very small. His myth and the ideas he promoted as good were very catchy. Does the fact his whole life was a cope change anything? Is your appreciation of his work changed much by the fact he shot himself in the head the day he realized he had erectile dysfunction?

Remember what Wilde said when he got the news..."What a good shot."

>>20255282
I don't really have the bias that you think I have, I was trying to describe this in as morally neutral terms as possible. I was thinking of changing the word 'children' because I'm talking precisely about the changing standards of what a 'child' is, but figured that even the Greeks thought one became a man at around 18-20ish so I thought it would still be a useful term here.

>>20255293
>I don't really have the bias that you think I have
So this is quite unfortunate for the both of us. kek
I wanna have an arduous (and argumentative) opositor in order to make my point better.

>>20255330
Sorry kek

>>20251582
>life your life full of pleasures
>at the very end, when it doesn't matter anymore, you take a gamble on god
kek do christfags really?

>>20255274
>he called America a puppet of the Jews

they hated Ezra because he told the truth

>>20254535
>what is appealing about sucking a grown man's penis?
As opposed to sucking an underage boy's penis?

>>20254535
Believe it or not, hundreds of thousands of heterosexual women do this every day.

>>20250808
>>20254250
>>20254399
>>20254847
Filtered. Start with the Greeks.

>>20251324
This is retarded statement because instead of making homosexuality appear as bad as pederasty, it makes pederasty seem not so bad like homosexuality (a normal behavior seen throughout all the ages of man)

>>20252445
It called integrity, or “not bending the knee” in popular speech. Wilde was based.

>>20253018
Propaganda by whom and for what purpose?

>>20255820
is this your first day on this planet?

>>20256012
The Jews don't want us to know about Greek love