Towards the end of the 19th century Oscar Wilde wrote the four society plays that would become his most famous dramatical works: Lady Windermere’s Fan (1892), A Woman of No Importance (1893), An Ideal Husband (1895) and The Importance of Being Earnest (1895). The plays combined characteristic Wildean witticisms with cunning social criticism of Victorian society, using stereotypical characters such as the dandy, the fallen woman and the “ideal” woman to mock the double moral and strict social expectations of Victorian society. These plays, and to an extent also Wilde’s symbolist drama Salomé (1891), have been the object of a great deal of scholarly interest, with countless studies conducted on them from various angles and theoretical perspectives. Widely under-discussed, however, are Wilde’s two Elizabethan-Jacobean tragedies, The Duchess of Padua (1883) and A Florentine Tragedy (1894). This thesis therefore sets out to explore The Duchess of Padua and A Florentine Tragedy in order to gain a broader understanding of Wilde’s forgotten dramatical works, while also rediscovering two of Wilde’s most transgressive female characters—Beatrice and Bianca. Challenging traditional ideas of gender and female sexuality, Beatrice and Bianca can be read as proto-feminist figures who continually act transgressively, using their voice and agency to stand up against patriarchy and asserting their rights to experience their lives on their own terms. Through an in-depth study of these plays, this thesis will demonstrate that Wilde’s Elizabethan-Jacobean tragedies, with their strong, modern female characters Beatrice and Bianca deserve greater critical attention on a par with the extensive scholarship on Wilde’s well-known dramatical works.

This thesis explores the role of Nihilism in Oscar Wilde's thought and writing, beginning with the depiction of Russian Political Nihilism in Wilde's first play; Vera, or the Nihilists and tracing the engagement with philosophical Nihilism in his fiction, drama and essays, up to and including De Profundis. It is argued that Russian Political Nihilism derives from the same sources and expresses the same concerns as the philosophical Nihilism discussed by Nietzsche in The Will to Power, and that Nietzsche and Wilde, working independently, came to a strikingly similar understanding of Nihilism. Philosophical Nihilism is defined in two ways; as the complete absence of values (Absolute Nihilism) and as a sense that, while absolute values may exist, they are unattainable, unknowable or inexpressible (Relative Nihilism). Wilde uses his writing to express Nihilism while simultaneously seeking aesthetic and ethical counterforces to it, eventually coming to see Art and the life of the Artist as the ultimate forms of resistance to Nihilism. Wilde's philosophical views are examined in the context of his time, and in the light of his exceptionally wide reading. He is compared and contrasted with Nietzsche, the philosopher who has done most to shape our view of what Nihilism means, in his ethical and aesthetic response to Nihilism. The conclusion also considers the reception of Wilde's expression of Nihilism and his employment of Art as the only superior counterforce in the first half of the twentieth century, with particular reference to the works of Gide and Proust. Their engagement with Nihilism is explored both in historical context and as a way of addressing a problem which has become uniquely pervasive and pressing in the modern era.

My aim with this study has been to examine how the fashion is a leading component in the novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. I have studied the role fashion plays in the novel and in which way it can be seen as a way of letting the reader know the important role of fashion in 19tcentury England and the morals of Oscar Wilde. To prove my thesis I have used literature that shows how Oscar Wilde uses influences from his own life in his writing of The Picture of Dorian Gray. I have also used Judith Butler's theory of performativity in analyzing the characters in ordet to display their way of staging themselves and their lifestyles and their dependence of that performativity in their interactions. Even though the theory of performativity often is used to hold the importance of the sexes, I have concluded that it has an important role in the novel when Dorian Gray interacts with the character Sibyl Vane who is an actress. My results have shown that fashion in the novel is often a way of letting the reader know important elements of a character in the way that certain fabrics and items are mentioned when Wilde writes about his characters. I have also found that fashion is an important factor when the characters judge each when they speak about the way they dress. The way fashion is presented in the novel is important to my thesis and has shown me how fashion can be used in literature as symbolic elements guiding the narrative. Keywords: Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Fashion in literature, Performativity. Judith Butler

Between 1880 and 1920, both urban England and essays published in urban England underwent seismic shifts and splits, as population grew, education and technology advanced, and periodical publishing expanded. The city grew both larger in size and smaller in units of comprehensibility, and many of its people were (or were perceived by certain thinkers to be) less free and more instrumental. The periodical essay too grew more common and, at the same time, smaller in size, less free, and more instrumental, as it developed closer ties with journalism, with the industrial city, and with readers of all classes. By an examination of various forms of essaying in the period, this thesis argues that the essay's transitions parallel modernity's transitions, not only because the essay reflects or enacts or follows trends in modernity, but also because modernity at the time was conditioned by the essay's way of thinking through its form and cannot be fully understood without reference to the activities of the urban periodical essay at the time. The essay between 1880 and 1920 was a highly social genre, and this sociability manifested in a number of ways this thesis will explore. Its periodical context allowed it a ritual, patterning relationship with its readers; its brevity and limitations pushed it into dialectical, double-glancing modes of thought that complemented its fragmented setting; its tendency to direct attention away from its own form gave it a unique, constitutive role in literary modernisms; its material connections to new technologies implicated it in new doubts concerning urban modernity, and its massed readership embroiled it in fears over anti- or a-intellectual over-simplification. This thesis tells the stories of the periodical essay, in London, as an actor in modernity's transitions, by examining four concepts central to both the essay and to emergent modernity: play, the trick, doubt, and wisdom. These concepts are treated, primarily, through the work of three writers-Oscar Wilde, G. K. Chesterton, and Virginia Woolf-all of whom, in their styling of the essay, embody different moments and essayistic registers in the transitions of modernity and reveal the cross-fertilising relationship between essaying and what is meant by 'the modern'.

In nineteenth-century literary studies and histories, Théophile Gautier (1811-1872) is still largely remembered as the instigator of the doctrine of Art for Art's Sake, mostly because of his novel Mademoiselle de Maupin (1835) and its controversial preface. This recognition is usually accompanied by a retrospective appreciation of Gautier's work in light of the more famous authors who succeeded him and developed some of the precepts of the doctrine, such as Baudelaire. This thesis is a comparative study of Gautier and Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) as the two main exponents of the doctrine of Art for Art's Sake respectively in France and Britain. While comparisons between Gautier and Baudelaire have tended to highlight the superiority of the latter, a comparison with Wilde allows Gautier to be seen and understood in his own terms, and simultaneously casts a new light on Wilde's contribution to the development of the doctrine. My study is the first to examine the works of the two authors comparatively from the vantage point of their aesthetic theories. I argue that in order better to assess their contribution, it is necessary to start with an analysis of their experimentations with literary form. The overall aim of the thesis is to re-evaluate their fictional works which, as a result of their commitment to the doctrine, are often seen as lacking in depth and content, and as being too descriptive and decorative. The central argument is that the very decorative form of their works should be seen as the starting point of an ambitious reflection on literature, its aims and its relation to other artistic media, the visual arts in particular.

This dissertation examines the motif of idolatry in the work of two modernist authors, Oscar Wilde and Joseph Conrad, and one modernist filmmaker, Alfred Hitchcock. The idols in these texts serve a contradictory role, signifying both increasing commodification under capitalism and an attempt to formulate a new ethics of image-making in response to this global transition. Chapter 1 analyzes Wilde’s play Salomé. Attending to the original French and to biblical allusion, I demonstrate that the text’s key generative trope is idolatry, which occupies a position both sacred and profane. The play superimposes two moments of historical rupture, positing Salomé as the embodiment of a new artistic potential of idolatry under monopoly capitalism. Chapter 2 analyzes Conrad’s early fiction, particularly The Nigger of the “Narcissus,” “The Return,” “Karain,” and Nostromo. I track a three-stage development in Conrad’s representations of idols, whereby the idol is associated with utopian fantasy, false ideals, and the artistic process. I also identify a new image-making technique, “retroactive modification,” which attempts to destabilize the image and thus counter problems of narrative representation, particularly reification and historical inauthenticity. Chapter 3 analyzes Hitchcock’s Blackmail, Saboteur, and Shadow of a Doubt, and challenges the notion of Hitchcock as auteur. The first two films culminate in sequences featuring monumental and iconic statuary. In the earlier British film, this process signifies a reckoning with history; in the later American film, it signifies the threat of history’s erasure and the degradation of art. Shadow of a Doubt signals a shift to a post-modern global-capitalist paradigm and a focus on the celebrity idol. My methodology builds on the work of Fredric Jameson and Slavoj Žižek to elucidate cultural fantasies underlying the texts and the ways in which the texts perform the psychical maneuver of disavowal, whereby a proposition is simultaneously asserted and denied. This double movement in Wilde, Conrad, and Hitchcock’s texts bespeaks a striving, through the motif of idolatry, to represent the image in motion. Though this desire is finally realized in the technology of film, the authenticity of that realization is undermined by the historical contradictions that enable its production. / 2020-12-11T00:00:00Z