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
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UBC/oai:circle.library.ubc.ca:2429/13083 |
| Date | 05 1900 |
| Creators | Kinsella, Paul |
| Source Sets | University of British Columbia |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, Thesis/Dissertation |
| Format | 16878513 bytes, application/pdf |
| Rights | For non-commercial purposes only, such as research, private study and education. Additional conditions apply, see Terms of Use https://open.library.ubc.ca/terms_of_use. |
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