Oscar Wilde’s name is a widely recognized one, but his story is not talked about nearly as often. When I began this project, all I knew of Mr. Wilde was that he was the man who wrote The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Importance of Being Earnest. A quick Google search turned up a bunch of witty quotes that I thought were funny, so I decided I’d like to know more about the man who would write things like “Some cause happiness wherever they go; others when they go” and “Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.” It wasn't only the semicolons that got my attention, I was interested in the way that most of these quotes were phrased casually but seemed to mean much more. It’s a really small thing, but it made me curious about Oscar Wilde’s life. I really didn’t know what I was getting into.
The first genre I chose to do is a biography. It’s pretty condensed, as far as biographies go, but I included the things I thought were important and noteworthy from Mr. Wilde’s life. I wanted to know most of the details as soon as possible, so I’d have an idea of where to go from there, so I decided an overview of his life would be the best place to start.
Next, I chose to do a mock tabloid article about a scandal he was involved in. I won’t put any huge spoilers here (although if you read the biography first, you’ll already know). However, it was quite easy to pick out which characteristic society at that time would have found most scandalous.
The advertisement for The Importance of Being Earnest came next, as it was by far his most successful play. I thought it would be interesting to make a sort of poster for it as we would for movies now, with the big stars front and center, as it was a pretty big deal back in the day.
After that comes Oscar Wilde’s Twitter account. This one isn’t quite as informational as the others, but I enjoyed making it. I’m not sure he would really approve, but I had fun pretending that he would use the internet lingo of today -- especially “tbh” and hashtags.
Probably the easiest genre was the timeline I compiled of events in Mr. Wilde’s life. It’s near the end, so after you’ve read the other genres, you can easily place the events and see how his life played out.
The last genre I chose was the obituary. Because death is the last thing to happen to someone, it is the last genre listed on my page. Both Oscar Wilde and his wife, Constance Lloyd, have an obituary on this page.
This is one of the more challenging projects I’ve done in high school. Requiring so many different genres makes it fun to complete, but it also pushed me out of my comfort zone. I’m used to just cranking out research papers, but this project really made me think creatively about what different ideas I could use to explain my topic and tell a story of a man’s life from different points of view. I didn’t always enjoy working with the Weebly because I would get very distracted by the layout of the website and forget that I was supposed to be doing research, which was a bit of a problem. However, I really do like the idea of a multi-genre project. I think it really helped me to gain a deeper understanding of the story overall by forcing me to look at the situation from different viewpoints, such as that of Mr. Wilde’s wife, his lover, or his son. I do actually like writing research papers, but I think this project made me get more creative, so I can’t say that I would have rather done a traditional paper. It’s always good to mix things up.
Thank you, and I hope you enjoy yourself.
The first genre I chose to do is a biography. It’s pretty condensed, as far as biographies go, but I included the things I thought were important and noteworthy from Mr. Wilde’s life. I wanted to know most of the details as soon as possible, so I’d have an idea of where to go from there, so I decided an overview of his life would be the best place to start.
Next, I chose to do a mock tabloid article about a scandal he was involved in. I won’t put any huge spoilers here (although if you read the biography first, you’ll already know). However, it was quite easy to pick out which characteristic society at that time would have found most scandalous.
The advertisement for The Importance of Being Earnest came next, as it was by far his most successful play. I thought it would be interesting to make a sort of poster for it as we would for movies now, with the big stars front and center, as it was a pretty big deal back in the day.
After that comes Oscar Wilde’s Twitter account. This one isn’t quite as informational as the others, but I enjoyed making it. I’m not sure he would really approve, but I had fun pretending that he would use the internet lingo of today -- especially “tbh” and hashtags.
Probably the easiest genre was the timeline I compiled of events in Mr. Wilde’s life. It’s near the end, so after you’ve read the other genres, you can easily place the events and see how his life played out.
The last genre I chose was the obituary. Because death is the last thing to happen to someone, it is the last genre listed on my page. Both Oscar Wilde and his wife, Constance Lloyd, have an obituary on this page.
This is one of the more challenging projects I’ve done in high school. Requiring so many different genres makes it fun to complete, but it also pushed me out of my comfort zone. I’m used to just cranking out research papers, but this project really made me think creatively about what different ideas I could use to explain my topic and tell a story of a man’s life from different points of view. I didn’t always enjoy working with the Weebly because I would get very distracted by the layout of the website and forget that I was supposed to be doing research, which was a bit of a problem. However, I really do like the idea of a multi-genre project. I think it really helped me to gain a deeper understanding of the story overall by forcing me to look at the situation from different viewpoints, such as that of Mr. Wilde’s wife, his lover, or his son. I do actually like writing research papers, but I think this project made me get more creative, so I can’t say that I would have rather done a traditional paper. It’s always good to mix things up.
Thank you, and I hope you enjoy yourself.