Midterm Essay

“But what is the difference between literature and journalism? .. Journalism is unreadable and literature is not read. That is all.” – Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), The Critics as Artist, 1891

                Oscar Wilde was an Irish writer and poet in where he became popular in the 1880s for his plays. Wilde became a famous for his playwrights, novels, poems and also he became a journalist. He was a biting wit, being intelligent he kept up with his work refining ideas and having artistic ideas into his novels. In 1886-89 he became a journalist as he enjoyed reviewing and writing about the views of art, literature and life. The many reviews that he wrote where positive and chatty as it suited his style. Wilde manipulated the marketplace in literature and his own terms.

                Oscar says “But what is the difference between literature and journalism?..” Journalism is unreadable and literature is not read. That is all”. Basically this quote is disagreeing in the fact that Wilde was upset how everybody would read journalism when it did not make sense that much as for literature he thought it would be easier to read since it will stay in one subject of a story. The fact that people did not read his stories upset him in where he became a journalist and wrote about literature. Journalism is professionally writing in newspapers, magazines or even broadcasting in a radio have people read/hear about what’s going on. For journalism you cannot lie, make up a story, plagiarizing or even change it up because there would be consequences. As also in journalism you have to gather news and related information to give to an audience. Otherwise literature is much different than journalism since it can be either fiction or non-fiction. This quote is agreeable and disagreeable because there’s so many differences between this two categories.

 This is a midterm essay I had written in the middle of the year. This essay was a quote analysis of journalism about Oscar Wilde and his opinion in it.