Wilde Writings: Contextual Conditions (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Wilde Writings: Contextual Conditions Dennis Denisoff (bio) Wilde Writings: Contextual Conditions, edited by Joseph Bristow; pp. xi + 334. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003, $41.95. Xiaoyi Zhou's contribution to Wilde Writings describes the 1929 performance of Oscar Wilde's Salomé in Shanghai. Xiaoyi renders the heroine as assuming "the primary role of a rebel and destroyer of tradition" (311). The essays in Wilde Writings display a similar aim of rebelling against dominant traditions in Wilde scholarship of the past couple of decades. In this collection, the general movement is away from either a zealous application of new theoretical paradigms or a conception of the man himself as a rebel. It is [End Page 375] appropriate, then, that Wilde Writings is most stimulating and informative in its attention to historical detail and archival material. Joseph Bristow's introduction will be especially useful for those scholars new to Wilde studies. It offers an overview of the response to the man and his work from nineteenth-century cartoons to Richard Ellmann's 1987 biography. Bristow selected the other contributions from papers delivered during the conference series "Oscar Wilde and the Culture of the Fin de Siècle," held by the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library in 1999. The essays are diverse, at times offering sites of contestation through their own differing interpretations of certain texts and issues. The dominant unifying aim of this collection is a reconsideration of Wilde's work and cultural identity through an emphasis on archival research and previously neglected written work by or related to Wilde. A glance at a few essays chosen for their differences conveys some of the benefits of this contextual approach. Wilde Writings does not foreground sexuality and queer theory, but issues of sex, sexuality, and desire nevertheless are addressed in new and interesting contexts. Essays by Lisa Hamilton, Ellis Hanson, and Laurence Senelick focus extensively on these subjects, but I would like to emphasize Ian Small's piece as an example of a less direct contribution to sexuality studies. In accord with arguments that he and Josephine M. Guy (also a contributor to the volume) make in Oscar Wilde's Profession (2000), Small begins by criticizing scholars who adopt a "particular reading" of Wilde's life—such as one rooted in his sexuality or nationality (86)—that functions "to elide the obvious material differences between Wilde's writings" (87). Through a consideration of the timing, initial production, and revision of De Profundis (1905), Small argues that the various versions of the piece would most accurately be distinguished as a "love-letter," a literary work, and a draft for both (98). Small's intention is not to explore the full implications of his interesting discovery that Wilde's love-letter was also intended for mass consumption. But his research does lead one to ask what Wilde's writing of a love-letter that he also wanted made public says about the way in which he and other people who possessed same-sex desires conceptualized homosexuality so soon after the trials. The dominant view has been that such individuals thought it best to lay low for a while, but Small portrays a group of people involved in the production not only of a literary work discussing male-male love, but also of a new homosexual identity. Small's meticulous research demonstrates, among other things, that a sensitivity to textual construction, revision, and reproduction can produce a more nuanced understanding of the construction of sexualities. Wilde's relationship to women, feminism, and women's roles in society also receives significant attention in the collection. Talia Schaffer offers an important discussion of the debt of aesthetic novels such as The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891) to the popular romances written primarily by Ouida and other female authors. Kerry Powell articulates the harmonies and discords between Wilde and the feminists of his era, arguing that, "as a journalist, novelist, playwright, and criminal, Wilde's career was to some extent shaped in reaction to what feminism was (or was becoming) in one of its most significant forms" (127). Meanwhile, Diana Maltz's essay considers the impact that Wilde's editorship of The Woman's World from...