This study examines the literary career of Oscar Wilde as the formation and expression of a sensibility exhibiting highly developed powers of both orality and literacy. In other words, Wilde's work and life reveal the mind of both a talented writer and a talker par excellence, and this inquiry explores the development and co-existence of the two modes, in particular as they manifest themselves in Wilde's writing and in his relations with the societies in which he found himself. Chapter One discusses the balance between Wilde's talk and his writing as it was experienced by W. B . Yeats, who emerges as a very persistent and perceptive biographer of this aspect of Wilde's genius. The theoretical framework and terminology developed by Walter J. Ong (1982) is also brought to bear on the discussion as a further illumination of Yeats's accounts. Chapter Two presents an outline of some aspects of the history and culture of Ireland which might explain the formation of a dual sensibility such as Wilde's. In Chapter Three this line of inquiry is extended further into the domestic circumstances in which Wilde grew up, focussing in particular on the influence of his tutor at Trinity, J. P. Mahaffy. A discussion of the links between Wilde and Mahaffy includes consideration of the parallels between their written works, culminating in an interpretation, at the end of the chapter, of the origins and dynamics o f Wilde's essay "The Decay of Lying." Chapter Four continues to explore the links between Mahaffy and Wilde, but shifts the focus to their mutual classicism, which also provides a lens through which to view the further development of Wilde's dual oral/chirographic sensibility at Oxford, symbolized in the person and the work of Walter Pater. I then offer a reading of "The Critic as Artist" as an expression of Wilde's Oxford literary idealism, expressed through his call to "return to the voice." From there this study moves to a discussion of Wilde's subsequent life and work in terms o f a combined orality and literacy. Chapter Five is devoted to an exploration o f the power of the voice and the spoken word in The Picture of Dorian Gray, and Chapter Six examines the spoken stories, Salome, and The Importance of Being Earnest through a similar perspective. The Conclusion extends the analysis to Wilde's trial and prison sentence, his last works including De Profundis, and his final years as a storyteller in Paris.

This study examines the literary career of Oscar Wilde as the formation and expression of a sensibility exhibiting highly developed powers of both orality and literacy. In other words, Wilde's work and life reveal the mind of both a talented writer and a talker par excellence, and this inquiry explores the development and co-existence of the two modes, in particular as they manifest themselves in Wilde's writing and in his relations with the societies in which he found himself. Chapter One discusses the balance between Wilde's talk and his writing as it was experienced by W. B . Yeats, who emerges as a very persistent and perceptive biographer of this aspect of Wilde's genius. The theoretical framework and terminology developed by Walter J. Ong (1982) is also brought to bear on the discussion as a further illumination of Yeats's accounts. Chapter Two presents an outline of some aspects of the history and culture of Ireland which might explain the formation of a dual sensibility such as Wilde's. In Chapter Three this line of inquiry is extended further into the domestic circumstances in which Wilde grew up, focussing in particular on the influence of his tutor at Trinity, J. P. Mahaffy. A discussion of the links between Wilde and Mahaffy includes consideration of the parallels between their written works, culminating in an interpretation, at the end of the chapter, of the origins and dynamics o f Wilde's essay "The Decay of Lying." Chapter Four continues to explore the links between Mahaffy and Wilde, but shifts the focus to their mutual classicism, which also provides a lens through which to view the further development of Wilde's dual oral/chirographic sensibility at Oxford, symbolized in the person and the work of Walter Pater. I then offer a reading of "The Critic as Artist" as an expression of Wilde's Oxford literary idealism, expressed through his call to "return to the voice." From there this study moves to a discussion of Wilde's subsequent life and work in terms o f a combined orality and literacy. Chapter Five is devoted to an exploration o f the power of the voice and the spoken word in The Picture of Dorian Gray, and Chapter Six examines the spoken stories, Salome, and The Importance of Being Earnest through a similar perspective. The Conclusion extends the analysis to Wilde's trial and prison sentence, his last works including De Profundis, and his final years as a storyteller in Paris. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

This study analyzes the themes of victimization and self-sacrifice as they appear in the life and works of Oscar Wilde. "Victimization" is defined as an instance in which one character disregards, damages, or destroys another's well-being; "self-sacrifice" is an instance in which one character acts to his own detriment in order to help another or through dedication to a cause or belief. Chapter I discusses the way in which these concepts affected Wilde's personal life. Chapters II-VI discuss their inclusion in his romantic/decadent dramas, social comedies, various stories and tales, novel, and final poem; and Chapter VII concludes by demonstrating the overall tone of charitable morality that these two themes create in Wilde's work as a whole.

Androgyny evokes nowadays a plethora of images and associations. In order to discover the meaning of ‘androgyny' conveyed to authors of the so-called Decadent literature movement I found it necessary to give a brief history of the term. However, two androgynous images – ‘hermaphrodite' and ‘asexual' androgyny – have always co-existed and were especially in vogue in the literature of the Fin-de-Siècle period to denote an emerging homosexual identity and especially so in the works of Oscar Wilde. In order to illustrate this I take a psychological approach in an analysis of androgynous literary figures based on R.D. Laing's theories. Particularly in The Divided Self, Laing shows what kind of behaviour patterns stigmatised individuals display, prone as they were to suffering from a heightened consciousness of the ‘self'. In particular, characters not necessarily conforming to one or the other gender are determined by certain stages of ontological insecurity which can be traced in androgynous characters in Decadent literature. In this context ‘Camp' plays an important role, androgyny being one of its central images. Because signs of effeminacy in men were the first visible signs of homosexuality, I examine how ‘camping it up' was a method of dealing with their stigma. The first and most well-known male image associated with what we would now term ‘Camp' is that of the dandy. There are several types of the dandy and each of them undergoes an analysis as to whether they contain psychological signs of stigmatisation. The same procedure is applied to works of authors from the period of French Decadence of the nineteenth century and other literary works which influenced Oscar Wilde. It was there where an increasing psychologisation of protagonists, and especially also stigmatised characters first began to be recognised. I will demonstrate how much Oscar Wilde was greatly influenced by the literary French Decadent tradition of shifting the outer plot to an inner plot. In particular in The Picture of Dorian Gray, but also in his other works, this becomes clear by referring to R. D. Laing's categories of psychological character studies which display, as in Wilde's works, the effects of stigma caused by a gender nonconforming identity.

Texte remanié de: Diss.--Fremdsprachliche Philologien--Marburg--Philipps-Universität, 2000. / Bibliogr. p. 317-337.

Thèse de doctorat : Littérature générale et comparée : Lyon 2 : 2001. / Titre provenant de l'écran-titre. Bibliogr.. Index.

This thesis explores the works of Oscar Wilde as they articulate and model an aesthetic of play. I show that Wilde distinguishes between true and false forms--or what I call models and anti-models--of play in a number of areas: art, criticism, and society, language, thought, and culture, self and other. My introduction establishes a context for the cultural value of play in the nineteenth century. I survey the ideas of Friedrich Schiller, who treats play in the aesthetic realm; Matthew Arnold, who discusses Criticism as a free play of the mind; Herbert Spencer, who explores play in the context of evolution; and Johan Huizinga, who analyses play in its social context. In my three chapters on Wilde's critical essays, I draw upon their ideas to describe Wilde's philosophy of play and examine how the form of Wilde's critical essays illuminates his aesthetic. My first chapter explores models and anti-models of play in Art, as they are described by Vivian in "The Decay of Lying." By exploring the role of "lying" in its aesthetic rather ethical context, Vivian demonstrates the value of the play-spirit for the development of culture. My second chapter discusses models and anti-models of play in Criticism as they are described by Gilbert in "The Critic as Artist." By refashioning the traditions of nineteenth-century criticism, Gilbert presents his own model of criticism as an aesthetic activity and demonstrates the role of the play-spirit in the development of the individual and the race. My third chapter relates models and anti-models of play in art, criticism, and social life to the modes of self-realization described by Wilde in "The Soul of Man Under Socialism." I take up Wilde's well-known paradox, that Socialism is a means of realizing Individualism, by showing how Wilde plays with these terms in an aesthetic rather than a political context. In the remaining chapters I read Wilde's fictional and dramatic texts in light of his aesthetics and treat the characters as models and anti-models of the play-spirit. In The Picture of Dorian Gray, I take the measure of play, not morality, as a guide for interpretation. In this reading Lord Henry Wotton is the novel's critic as artist, while Dorian Gray, with his literal-mindedness, his imitative instinct, and his ruthless narcissism, fails to achieve the aesthetic disinterestedness that characterizes true play. My sixth chapter traces themes related to play—game, ceremony, and performance—in Wilde's Society Comedies to demonstrate how these plays both reflect and critique the spectacle of Society and the conventions of nineteenth-century melodrama. My thesis concludes with The Importance of Being Earnest as it presents a culmination of Wilde's play-spirit and his playful linguistic strategies. I show how both the form and content of Earnest model the paradoxical ideal of play itself—that through play we may realize the experience of being at one with ourselves and on good terms with the world.

Thesis (D.Phil.)--University of Oxford, 2008. / Supervisor: Dr John Sloan. Bibliography: leaves 290-300.

Based on the author's dissertation. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 265-279) and index.

Thesis (M. Phil. 95)--University of Hong Kong, 1995. / Includes bibliographical references (leaf 160-170).