"Central to the decadent movement was the view that art is totally opposed to nature, in the sense both of biological nature and of the standard, or natural, norms of morality and sexual behavior" (Abrams, 54). In "The Decay of Lying" Oscar Wilde uses his decadent ideology in a...

1. The Misanthrope A central theme that runs throughput this play and which forms the basis of this discussion is the issue of the compromise between the critique of the fallacies and pretensions of society and the need to ameliorate these criticisms with false praise and lies in order to make ...