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The Reception of Oscar Wilde in Europe |
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Trinity College, Oxford 8th-9th March 2008 |
INTRODUCTION |
| 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. His texts command a wide readership outside the Anglo-American context and his plays are regularly performed in the major European theatres. But the history of his critical reception in the twentieth century is complex and discontinuous. In Britain Wilde suffered a long period of comparative neglect and lack of scholarship that followed the scandal of his conviction for ‘gross indecency’ in 1895; and it is only in the last few decades that his works have been fully reassessed and reinstated as central in the literary and dramatic canons of the nineteenth century. While Wilde was subjected to silence in Britain, he became a European phenomenon. He was famously attacked by Max Nordau in his influential treatise Degeneration; but he also attracted wide sympathy among fellow artists abroad, including major writers such as André Gide in France, Gabriele D’Annunzio in Italy and Hugo von Hofmannsthal in Austria. His works were performed in ground-breaking productions. Wilde’s 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. Wilde became a cultural type that migrated across borders and genres: the decadent aesthete, the flamboyant dandy, the tormented artist, the homosexual. He was and is in the centre of a cultural mythology that spans from the Victorian fin de siècle to our own day. |
| This colloquium is part of an ongoing project that will result in the publication of a volume dedicated to Wilde in the Series on the Reception of British and Irish Authors in Europe (general editor, Elinor Shaffer). The aim of the colloquium is to bring together scholars and students in order to come to as comprehensive an understanding as possible of the European legacy of Wilde’s work. The Wilde Reception was first discussed at a symposium at the Institute of English Studies, School of Advanced Studies, University of London on 20th October 2000. (see http://ies.sas.ac.uk/events/conferences/2000/FinDeSiecle.html); for the home website of the whole series, see http://www.clarehall.cam.ac.uk/rbae/. |
ORGANISER AND VOLUME EDITOR:
Stefano Evangelista |
For information you can contact him at
stefano-maria.evangelista@trinity.ox.ac.uk |
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This conference is sponsored by the English Faculty, Oxford University;
For Trinity College, click here |
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