Oscar Wilde and the Simulacrum
Oscar Wilde and the Simulacrum

Author: Giles Whiteley

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-07-05

Total Pages: 492

ISBN-13: 1351555456

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Oscar Wilde is more than a name, more than an author. From precocious Oxford undergraduate to cause celebre of the West End of the 1890s, to infamous criminal, the proper name Wilde has become an event in the history of literature and culture. Taking Wilde seriously as a philosopher in his own right, Whiteley's groundbreaking book places his texts into their philosophical context in order to show how Wilde broke from his peers, and in particular from idealism, and challenges recent neo-historicist readings of Wilde which seem content to limit his irruptive power. Using the paradoxical concept of the simulacrum to resituate Wilde's work in relation to both his precursors and his contemporaries, Whiteley's study reads Wilde through Deleuze and postmodern philosophical commentary on the simulacrum. In a series of striking juxtapositions, Whiteley challenges us to rethink both Oscar Wilde's aesthetics and his philosophy, to take seriously both the man and the mask. His philosophy of masks is revealed to figure a truth of a different kind - the simulacra through which Wilde begins to develop and formulate a mature philosophy that constitutes an ethics of joy.

Oscar Wilde and the Simulacrum
Oscar Wilde and the Simulacrum

Author: Giles Whiteley

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-07-05

Total Pages: 373

ISBN-13: 1351555464

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Oscar Wilde is more than a name, more than an author. From precocious Oxford undergraduate to cause celebre of the West End of the 1890s, to infamous criminal, the proper name Wilde has become an event in the history of literature and culture. Taking Wilde seriously as a philosopher in his own right, Whiteley's groundbreaking book places his texts into their philosophical context in order to show how Wilde broke from his peers, and in particular from idealism, and challenges recent neo-historicist readings of Wilde which seem content to limit his irruptive power. Using the paradoxical concept of the simulacrum to resituate Wilde's work in relation to both his precursors and his contemporaries, Whiteley's study reads Wilde through Deleuze and postmodern philosophical commentary on the simulacrum. In a series of striking juxtapositions, Whiteley challenges us to rethink both Oscar Wilde's aesthetics and his philosophy, to take seriously both the man and the mask. His philosophy of masks is revealed to figure a truth of a different kind - the simulacra through which Wilde begins to develop and formulate a mature philosophy that constitutes an ethics of joy.

Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde

Author: Kimberly J. Stern

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2019-11-18

Total Pages: 271

ISBN-13: 3030246043

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Oscar Wilde: A Literary Life tracks the intellectual biography of one of the most influential minds of the nineteenth century. Rather than focusing on the dramatic events of Wilde’s life, this volume documents Wilde’s impressive forays into education, religion, science, philosophy, and social reform. In so doing, it provides an accessible and yet detailed account that reflects Wilde’s own commitment to the “contemplative life.” Suitable for seasoned readers as well as those new to the study of his work, Oscar Wilde: A Literary Life brings Wilde’s intellectual investments into sharp focus, while placing him within a cultural landscape that was always evolving and often fraught with contradiction.

Oscar Wilde's Decorated Books
Oscar Wilde's Decorated Books

Author: Nicholas Frankel

Publisher: University of Michigan Press

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13: 9780472110698

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With extensive reference to and exposition on Wilde's theoretical writings and letters, Frankel shows that, far from being marginal elements of the literary text, these decorative devices were central to Wilde's understanding of his own writings as well as to his "aesthetic" theory of language. Extensive illustrations support Frankel's arguments.".

The Invention of Oscar Wilde
The Invention of Oscar Wilde

Author: Nicholas Frankel

Publisher: Reaktion Books

Published: 2021-06-10

Total Pages: 287

ISBN-13: 1789144221

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“One should either wear a work of art, or be a work of art,” Oscar Wilde once declared. In The Invention of Oscar Wilde, Nicholas Frankel explores Wilde’s self-creation as a “work of art” and a carefully constructed cultural icon. Frankel takes readers on a journey through Wilde’s inventive, provocative life, from his Irish origins—and their public erasure—through his challenges to traditional concepts of masculinity and male sexuality, his marriage and his affairs with young men, including his great love Lord Alfred Douglas, to his criminal conviction and final years of exile in France. Along the way, Frankel takes a deep look at Wilde’s writings, paradoxical wit, and intellectual convictions.

Literary Cosmopolitanism in the English Fin de Siècle
Literary Cosmopolitanism in the English Fin de Siècle

Author: Stefano Evangelista

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2021-07-22

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 0192609831

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The fin de siècle witnessed an extensive and heated debate about cosmopolitanism, which transformed readers' attitudes towards national identity, foreign literatures, translation, and the idea of world literature. Focussing on literature written in English, Literary Cosmopolitanism in the English Fin de Siècle offers a critical examination of cosmopolitanism as a distinctive feature of the literary modernity of this important period of transition. No longer conceived purely as an abstract philosophical ideal, cosmopolitanism—or world citizenship—informed the actual, living practices of authors and readers who sought new ways of relating local and global identities in an increasingly interconnected world. The book presents literary cosmopolitanism as a field of debate and controversy. While some writers and readers embraced the creative, imaginative, emotional, and political potentials of world citizenship, hostile critics denounced it as a politically and morally suspect ideal, and stressed instead the responsibilities of literature towards the nation. In this age of empire and rising nationalism, world citizenship came to enshrine a paradox: it simultaneously connoted positions of privilege and marginality, connectivity and non-belonging. Chapters on Oscar Wilde, Lafcadio Hearn, George Egerton, the periodical press, and artificial languages bring to light the variety of literary responses to the idea of world citizenship that proliferated at the turn of the twentieth century. The book interrogates cosmopolitanism as a liberal ideology that celebrates human diversity and as a social identity linked to worldliness; it investigates its effect on gender, ethics, and the emotions. It presents the literature of the fin de siècle as a dynamic space of exchange and mediation, and argues that our own approach to literary studies should become less national in focus.

Victorian literary culture and ancient Egypt
Victorian literary culture and ancient Egypt

Author: Eleanor Dobson

Publisher: Manchester University Press

Published: 2020-08-04

Total Pages: 242

ISBN-13: 1526141906

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This edited collection considers representations of ancient Egypt in the literature of the nineteenth-century. It addresses themes such as reanimated mummies, ancient Egyptian mythology and contemporary consumer culture across literary modes ranging from burlesque satire to historical novels, stage performances to Gothic fiction and popular culture to the highbrow. The book illuminates unknown sources of historical significance – including the first illustration of an ambulatory mummy – revising current understandings of the works of canonical writers and grounding its analysis firmly in a contemporary context. The contributors demonstrate the extensive range of cultural interest in ancient Egypt that flourished during Victoria’s reign. At the same time, they use ancient Egypt to interrogate ‘selfhood’ and ‘otherness’, notions of race, imperialism, religion, gender and sexuality.

Modernism and Food Studies
Modernism and Food Studies

Author: Jessica Martell

Publisher: University Press of Florida

Published: 2019-01-09

Total Pages: 337

ISBN-13: 0813052491

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Transnational in scope, this much-needed volume explores how modernist writers and artists address and critique the dramatic changes to food systems that took place in the early twentieth century. During this period, small farms were being replaced with industrial agriculture, political upheavals exacerbated food scarcity in many countries, and globalization opened up new modes of distributing culinary commodities. Looking at a unique variety of art forms by authors, painters, filmmakers, and chefs from Ireland, Italy, France, the United States, India, the former Soviet Union, and New Zealand, contributors draw attention to modernist representations of food, from production to distribution and consumption. They consider Oscar Wilde’s aestheticization of food, Katherine Mansfield’s use of eggs as a feminist symbol, Langston Hughes’s use of chocolate as a redemptive metaphor for blackness, hospitality in William Faulkner’s Sanctuary, Ernest Hemingway’s struggles with gender and sexuality as expressed through food and culinary objects, Futurist cuisine, avant-garde cookbooks, and the impact of national famines on the work of James Joyce, Viktor Shklovsky, and Tarashankar Bandyopadhyay. Less celebrated topics of putrefaction and waste are analyzed in discussions of food as both a technology of control and a tool for resistance. The diverse themes and methodologies assembled here underscore the importance of food studies not only for the literary and visual arts but also for social transformation. The cultural work around food, the editors argue, determines what is produced, who has access to it, and what can or will change. A milestone volume, this collection uncovers new links between seemingly disparate spaces, cultures, and artistic media and demystifies the connection between modernist aesthetics and the emerging food cultures of a globalizing world. Contributors: Giles Whiteley | Aimee Gasston | Randall Wilhelm | Bradford Taylor | Sean Mark | Céline Mansanti | Shannon Finck

The Routledge Companion to Literature and Class
The Routledge Companion to Literature and Class

Author: Gloria McMillan

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-09-01

Total Pages: 459

ISBN-13: 1000413977

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The Routledge Companion to Literature and Class offers a comprehensive and fresh assessment of the cultural impact of class in literature, analyzing various innovative, interdisciplinary approaches of textual analysis and intersections of literature, including class subjectivities, mental health, gender and queer studies, critical race theory, quantitative and scientific methods, and transnational perspectives in literary analysis. Utilizing these new methods and interdisciplinary maps from field-defining essayists, students will become aware of ways to bring these elusive texts into their own writing as one of the parallel perspectives through which to view literature. This volume will provide students with an insight into the history of the intersections of class, theory of class and invisibility in literature, and new trends in exploring class in literature. These multidimensional approaches to literature will be a crucial resource for undergraduate and graduate students becoming familiar with class analysis, and will offer seasoned scholars the most significant critical approaches in class studies.

The concept of truth. Four Works by Annette von Droste Hülshoff, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Fyodor Dostoevsky and Georges Bernanos
The concept of truth. Four Works by Annette von Droste Hülshoff, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Fyodor Dostoevsky and Georges Bernanos

Author: Ruth Levai

Publisher: GRIN Verlag

Published: 2021-03-03

Total Pages: 159

ISBN-13: 3346357244

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Doctoral Thesis / Dissertation from the year 2019 in the subject Philosophy - Philosophy of the 20th century, grade: 4.0, Eötvös Loránd University, language: English, abstract: Is truth necessarily unmediated? If so, can it be grasped/apprehended in its unmediated form? Or is it something that can only be engaged in this present moment in its present form? The structure of the study will be as follows: 1) a brief discussion of the influence of Enlightenment thinking upon German, French, American and Russian literature and/or culture before and throughout the authors’ lifetime, 2) an exposition of the aspects of the Enlightenment which were embraced or rejected by the authors, including a comparative look at each of their conversion experiences and how their Christian faith, though members of differing branches thereof, shaped their intellect, 3) an analysis of four specific works by the authors, demonstrating how they coincide with modern notions of truth and even precede recent discoveries about the nature of our reality, 4) and finally a discussion of the aftermath of Enlightenment assumptions in the twentieth century and the effects that they have produced in the modern and postmodern understanding of what constitutes the truth of our reality. Perhaps the key lies in understanding the ambivalence of mimesis itself, an imprecise concept which encompasses both what modern French philosopher Jean-Luc Marion would call the icon and the idol. Speaking of representation as a conduit of truth vs. a conduit of falsehood, or the icon versus the idol Marion writes: The icon...attempts to...allow that the visible not cease to refer to an other than itself, without, however, that other ever being reproduced in the visible...it teaches the gaze, thus does not cease to correct it in order that it go back from visible to visible as far as the end of infinity, to find in infinity something new...the gaze can never rest or settle if it looks at an icon...in this sense, the icon makes visible only by giving rise to an infinite gaze. To find in infinity something new: let this be the defining theme of our study, as it so felicitously encompasses the quest of post-Enlightenment thinkers, including our authors, Droste, Stowe, Dostoevsky and Bernanos, as well as post-relativity physicists, to grasp that reality which maintains its validity by escaping us.