The Catholic Imagination of Oscar Wilde – Prof. Guiseppe Pezzini

Prof. Giuseppe Pezzini argues that Oscar Wilde's aestheticism and life journey reveal a Catholic imagination, where art confronts suffering and beauty leads to embracing the full reality of pain, culminating in his final reconciliation with faith.

This lecture was given on March 23rd, 2026, at University of Galway.

For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events.

About the Speakers:

Prof. Guiseppe Pezzini is an Associate Professor of Latin Language and Literature at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, specializing in Early Latin (3rd–1st c. BC). A linguist and philologist by training, he explores the period's crucial role in shaping Roman-Greek cultural identity, applying expertise in ancient metre, textual criticism, and digital humanities to his research.

His career has included teaching at the University of St Andrews and research fellowships at Magdalen College Oxford and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. He studied at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa and earned his D.Phil. from the University of Oxford. From 2010 to 2013, he also served as an Assistant Editor for the Oxford Dictionary of Medieval Latin.

Professor Pezzini's interests extend to the classical ancestry of modern English literature. This is seen in his forthcoming monograph, Tolkien and the Mystery of Literary Creation (Cambridge University Press 2025). Other recent and forthcoming books include volumes on Early Latin (Cambridge 2023), Roman Cultural History (Oxford 2025), and an edition and commentary on Terence's Heauton Timorumenos (forthcoming in the Cambridge ‘Orange Series’).

Keywords: Aestheticism, Beauty, Conversion, De Profundis, Dorian Gray, Suffering, Happy Prince, Prison, Prophecy, Wounded Humanity