In De Profundis, which Wilde wrote in jail toward the end of his life, he writes, “the two great turning-points of my life were when my father sent me to Oxford, and when society sent me to prison.” Presumably the latter was a much different sort of turning point than the former.

Indeed, Wilde generally associated Oxford with beauty and with freedom of thought.  In his essay “The Critic as Artist,” he praises Oxford for its “loveliness of environment”; it is a place where “the dullness of tutors and professors matters very little when one can loiter in the grey cloisters at Magdalen, and listen to some flute-like voice singing in Waynfleete’s chapel, or lie in the green meadow, among the strange snakespotted fritillaries, and watch the sunburnt noon smite to a finer gold the tower’s gilded vanes, or wander up the Christ Church staircase beneath the vaulted ceiling’s shadowy fans, or pass through the sculptured gateway of Laud’s building in the College of St. John.”

What is your impression? Are you caught up in the natural beauty of the place? Or arrested by the interest of some work of art or architecture? Or, on the other hand, does some aspect of Oxford annoy you or leave you cold? Discuss in relation to some particular object, view, etc.