Call for Papers: The Reception of Oscar Wilde in Europe

[Evgenii Bershtein]

The Reception of Oscar Wilde in Europe

Trinity College, Oxford	8 March 2008


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, to take place in Trinity College, Oxford, on 8 March 
2008, 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). Several 
contributions have already been commissioned. The aim of the colloquium 
is twofold: to provide current contributors with a forum to exchange 
ideas and findings; and to widen the scope of the existing research by 
bringing in new scholars and students in order to come to as 
comprehensive an understanding as possible of the European legacy of 
Wilde’s work. There is the possibility that some of the papers may be 
eventually included in the volume.

Proposals are therefore invited for papers that explore any aspect of 
Wilde’s European reception, from the nineteenth to the twenty-first 
century. Contributions might include, but are not limited to questions 
of literary influence, performance history, translation, cultural and 
intellectual history, censorship, gender, the Wilde myth, etc.

Please submit 300-word abstracts for 20-minute papers to Stefano 
Evangelista (stefano-maria.evangelista at trinity.ox.ac.uk) by 1 December 2007.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Use your web browser to search the archives, control your subscription
  options, and more.  Visit and bookmark the SEELANGS Web Interface at:
                    http://seelangs.home.comcast.net/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------