"Oscar Wilde and the Politics of Posthumous Sainthood: Hofmannstahl, Mirbeau, Proust" (original) (raw)
Related papers
2013
In an agonized passage in De Profundis, Oscar Wilde writes that his parents 'had bequeathed me a name they had made noble and honoured, not merely in literature, art, archaeology and science, but in the public history of my own country, in its evolution as a nation. I had disgraced that name eternally. I had made it a low byword among low people. I had dragged it through the very mire. I had given it to brutes that they might make it brutal, and to fools that they might turn it into a synonym for folly.' 1 Throughout his life, Wilde had been deeply proud of his parents' achievements, and the legacy they had bequeathed him, a fact that makes the self-lacerating passage above seem all the more poignant and painful. The context for the passage was of course his own humiliating trial and imprisonment, and the recent death of his mother while he was in Reading Gaol (having been refused permission to visit her during her final illness). At the time he was drafting the long autobiographical letter that became De Profundis, Oscar Wilde had become one of the most famous (and infamous) writers in the world. But his parents-Sir William Wilde and Jane Francesca Elgee ('Speranza')-were fascinating personalities in their own right, and it has been tempting for readers and critics to see them as catalysts for Oscar's own talents and behaviour. Twenty years after his death, W. B. Yeats admitted that 'of late years I have often explained Wilde to myself by his family history'. 2 He was not the only major Irish writer to do so. James Joyce wrote that the 'atmosphere of permissiveness and prodigality' that prevailed at the Wilde household during Oscar's youth may have contributed to 'the sad mania (if it can be so called) that would later drag him to his ruin'. 3 Since then numerous literary critics have sought, often persuasively, to link Wilde's formative years in Dublin with his subsequent aesthetics and politics. 4 To see Oscar in the lights of his parents' lives and careers is to firmly locate him as an Irish writer, or, more specifically, as the product of an
The Cambridge Companion to Oscar …, 1997
bond of commercial prosperity, the channel of communication between nation and nation, and not unfrequently the interpreter between a man and his own conscience.' 1 It follows that, if fiction is the very stuff by which society is made, Wilde could only become a writer -and an Irishman -in England. Only there could he create himself through the fictions which formed 'the channel of communication between nation and nation', the stereotypes by which one understood the other.
Authorship 3:2 (Autumn 2014)
This essay introduces the concept of “authorialism” to characterise the critical orientation that sees literary works primarily as actions on the part of their authors rather than as linguistic objects, using the early reception of Oscar Wilde’s works as a case study. It is argued that authorialism was the dominant tendency in 1875-1900 Anglophone criticism, and that it has characterised assessments of Wilde’s works to this day. The method has the advantage of finding coherence in literary works, which is useful in assessing matters of value; the textual features of Wilde’s writings, however, resist authorialist readings by not featuring the expected coherence.
WILDEAN MORALITY: AN ANALYSIS OF OSCAR WILDE'S SHORT STORIES
(1854-1900) was born in Dublin, Ireland, and went on to become one of the most renowned literary giants of the nineteenth century. Known to be dashing and amboyant, he was regarded as exceptionally charming, with a sharp wit and dazzling conversational skill. He allied himself primarily with the Aesthetic movement-he was one of its most well-known proponents. In his time he was a popular socialite, but not known so much for his artistic capabilities, until the publication of his rst play, Lady Windermere's Fan in 1892. John Quintus writes, "A curious strategy common to most studies of Oscar Wilde is the omission of his fairy tales, prose poems, and, more often than not, his criticism. The avoidance of these stories and articles suggests an unwillingness to treat material which is prima facie more serious and more moral than the amoral hedonism, the "studied triviality" so long associated with both Wilde's life and his art," (Quintus). Even though he was one of the most proli c writers of the Victorian Age, much of what Wilde wrote upended typical Victorian values. Interestingly, he still was, in Jerry Griswold's words, 'a Victorian gentleman who could not altogether escape a Victorian predilection to preach-indeed, to be moralistic.' Wilde condemned sel shness, celebrated love, and had very genuine compassion for su ering. Despite his endorsement of Decadence and an indulgent lifestyle, Wilde's writing shows him to be a man concerned about the world, and anxious about people. This, however, warred with his somewhat nihilistic belief that goodness was ultimately an act for oneself, and would likely go unnoticed. Wilde spells out quite clearly his rejection of sacri ce and his endorsement of mercy. Like John Stuart Mill, he considered that sacri ce was for those who expected something in return-even as they gave, they wished to be acknowledged that sacri ce by itself was meaningless until it was recompensed for.