Call for Papers: The Reception of Oscar Wilde in Europe
Evgenii Bershtein
bershtee at REED.EDU
Fri Sep 21 22:21:12 UTC 2007
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.
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