Wilde the Irishman - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0300072961 ISBN 13: 9780300072969

Publisher: Yale University Press, 1998

Synopsis

In this vigorous study, leading Irish literary and artistic figures--including Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney--examine the surprisingly neglected theme of the "Irishness" of Oscar Wilde. The book includes critical essays that explore how Wilde reflected the Irish tradition as well as creative responses to Wilde by poets, playwrights, sculptors, a short story writer, and an actor.

About this title

Review

Oscar Wilde is generally considered a great British author, but by nationality and temperament Wilde was Anglo-Irish. Not only did he spend the first twenty years of his life in Ireland, but the most important influence on his life was his mother, Lady Jane Francesca Wilde, an avid Irish nationalist who wrote political pamphlets under the name Speranza. Wilde The Irishman is a collection of 17 pieces--mostly essays, but a poem, play fragment, and elegy as well--that elucidate the influence of Wilde's background on his life and work. The essays here range from a discussion of Wilde's misogyny, the relationship between Wilde's writing and that of E. F. Benson (author of the Lucia novels), the effect of Home Rule debates on Wilde's public identity, and the reception of Wilde's work in the context of racist British sentiment that viewed the Irish as less than human.

Wilde The Irishman places Wilde in a broadly defined political context, and locates his social and artistic critiques in his experience as an Irish cultural exile. Many of these pieces also, quite convincingly, trace Wilde's social criticism to his homosexuality and make clear connections between the his national and sexual disenfranchisement, providing both an important addition to Wilde scholarship and an understanding of the interconnections between nationality and sexual identity. --Michael Bronski

From Booklist

During his lifetime, Oscar Wilde claimed both English and Irish roots, but intervening generations have classified his work as English (not Irish) literature. "What difference does it make to read [Wilde] as Irish?" McCormack asks in his introduction, and nearly 20 authors--academics, poets, playwrights, journalists, and an actor--respond. Perhaps the most well known contributor is Nobel Prize^-winning poet Seamus Heaney. Some essays are rather academic (with a reference to Derrida here and there), but their range of subjects--from Wilde's relationship with the Irish oral tradition and with Parnell to his attitudes toward science, scapegoats, and Jesse James (murdered while Wilde was on a U.S. tour)--and genuine appreciation for this particular wild Irish boy will reward reader attention. Where interest in Wilde or in Irish literature is strong, this collection of analysis and celebration of the writer one contributor dubs "an Irish Sphinx" should find readers. Mary Carroll

Edition details

• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0300072961
• ISBN 13: 9780300072969
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 224
• Editor: McCormack Dr. Jerusha