Individualism, art and society : Oscar Wilde and assertion against authority

For Wilde, however, I would argue that a post-Renaissance individualism, 'broadly conceived as the view that the individual human subject is the maker of the world we inhabit' is inadequate. Wilde, while a recipient of the Romantic self, can also be seen as a proto-modern, post-colonial subject, quite consciously inhabiting many worlds and many selves. As Declan Kibard has astutely observed in his chapter, 'Oscar Wilde" The Artist as Irishman', Wilde was 'the first major artist to discredit the romantic ideal of sincerity and replace it with the darker imperative of authenticity: he saw that in being true to a single self, a sincere man may be false to half a dozen other selves.'