The Reception of Oscar Wilde in Europe

Stefano Evangelista

• Publisher: Continuum
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN:
  9781474245968
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781441173683
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: English Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) is now widely recognised not only as one of the most representative figures of the British fin de siècle, but as one of the most influential Anglophone authors of the nineteenth century. In Britain Wilde suffered a long period of comparative neglect following the scandal of his conviction for 'gross indecency' in 1895; and it is only recently that his works have been reassessed. But while Wilde was subjected to silence in Britain, he became a European phenomenon. His famous dandyism, his witticisms, paradoxes and provocations became the object of imitation and parody; his controversial aesthetic doctrines were a strong influence not only on decadent writers, but also on the development of symbolist and modernist cultures.

This collection of essays by leading international scholars and translators traces the cultural impact of Oscar Wilde's work across Europe, from the earliest translations and performances of his works in the 1890s to the present day.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Series Editor’s Preface: The Reception of Oscar Wilde in Europe
• Acknowledgements
• List of Contributors
• Abbreviations
• Reception Timeline
• Performance Timeline
• Introduction: Oscar Wilde: European by Sympathy
• 1 Picturing His Exact Decadence: The British Reception of Oscar Wilde
• 2 Performance and Place: Oscar Wilde and the Irish National Interest
• 3 The Artist as Aesthete: The French Creation of Wilde
• 4 Naturalizing Oscar Wilde as an homme de lettres: The French Reception of Dorian Gray and Salomé (1895–1922)
• 5 André Gide’s ‘Hommage à Oscar Wilde’ or ‘The Tale of Judas’
• 6 ‘Astonishing in my Italian’: Oscar Wilde’s First Italian Editions, 1890–1952
• 7 ‘Children of Pleasure’: Oscar Wilde and Italian Decadence
• 8 The Strange Adventures of Oscar Wilde in Spain (1892–1912)
• 9 The Reception of Wilde’s Works in Spain through Theatre Performances at the Turn of the Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries
• 10 Tragedy and the Apostle of Beauty: The Early Literary Reception of Oscar Wilde in Germany and Austria
• 11 Bunbury in Germany: Alive and Kicking
• 12 When Critics Disagree, the Artist Survives: Oscar Wilde, an All-Time Favourite of the Viennese Stage in the Twentieth Century
• 13 Composing Oscar: Settings of Wilde for the German Stage
• 14 From Continental Discourse to ‘A Breath from a Better World’: Oscar Wilde and Denmark
• 15 An Ideal Situation? The Importance of Oscar Wilde’s Dramatic Work in Hungary
• 16 Oscar Wilde and the Czech Decadence
• 17 The ‘Byron of Kipling’s England’: Oscar Wilde in Croatia
• 18 ‘Next to Christ’: Oscar Wilde in Russian Modernism
• Bibliography
• Index