Wilde Writings : Contextual Conditions

Opening with an introduction by Joseph Bristow and featuring thirteen original essays that examine Wilde's achievements as an aesthete, critic, dramatist, novelist, and poet, this provocative and ground-breaking volume ushers the field of Oscar Wilde studies into the twenty-first century. The contributors focus on three neglected areas of Wilde criticism – textual editing, the production and dissemination of Wilde's dramas, and the situating of Wilde's writings in cultural, political and social contexts – and cast fresh light on topics that include Wilde's early dramatic criticism, his engagement with socialist thought, his groundbreaking editorship of The Woman's World , and the relation of his plays to late-Victorian feminism and homosexual blackmail. WildeWritings brings together research by established and emergent scholars, some of whom draw on unpublished archival material, and all of whom have something fresh to say about Wilde. The collection provides new interventions into urgent critical debates about Wilde and effeminacy, masochism, and Christian theology, and draws attention to significant problems in the textual edition of Wilde's divergent canon of writing, his debt to the 'aesthetic' fiction of the popular novelist Ouida, and the transmission of his drama in twentieth-century China. Published by the University of Toronto Press in association with the UCLA Center for Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Studies and the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library. Contents 5 List of Illustrations 7 Preface and Acknowledgments 9 Introduction 13 Part I. Wilde Writings 53 1. Wilde's World: Oscar Wilde and Theatrical Journalism in the 1880s 53 2. "The Soul of Man under Socialism": A (Con)Textual History 71 Love-Letter, Spiritual Autobiography, or Prison Writing? 3. Identity and Value in De Profundis 98 4. Wilde's Exquisite Pain 113 Part II. Wilde Stages 137 5. Wilde Man: Masculinity, Feminism, and A Woman of No Importance 139 6. Wilde, and How to Be Modern: or, Bags of Red Gold 159 7. Master Wood's Profession: Wilde and the Subculture of Homosexual Blackmail in the Victorian Theatre 175 Part III. Wilde Contexts 197 8. Wilde's The Woman's World and the Culture of Aesthetic Philanthropy 197 9. The Origins of the Aesthetic Novel: Ouida, Wilde, and the Popular Romance 224 10. Oscar Wilde, New Women, and the Rhetoric of Effeminacy 242 11. Oscar Wilde and Jesus Christ 266 Part IV. Wilde Legacies 287 12. Oscar Wilde's Legacies to Clarion and New Age Socialist Aestheticism 287 13. Salome in China: The Aesthetic Art of Dying 307 Notes on the Contributors 329 Index 333 "Wilde Writings brings together research by established and emerging scholars, some of whom draw on unpublished archival material, and all of whom have something new and enlightening to say about Wilde. The collection provides fresh insights into critical debates about Wilde and effeminacy, masochism, and Christian theology, and also draws attention to significant problems in the textual editing of his writings, his debt to the 'aesthetic' fiction of the novelist Ouida, and the popularity of his drama in twentieth-century China."--Résumé de l'éditeur "Wilde Writings brings together research by established and emerging scholars, some of whom draw on unpublished archival material, and all of whom have something new and enlightening to say about Wilde. The collection provides fresh insights into critical debates about Wilde and effeminacy, masochism, and Christian theology, and also draws attention to significant problems in the textual editing of his writings, his debt to the 'aesthetic' fiction of the novelist Ouida, and the popularity of his drama in twentieth-century China."--BOOK JACKET.