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1

Sheety, Roger. "The sanctified lie : form and content in the art of Oscar Wilde." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1998. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk1/tape11/PQDD_0002/MQ43948.pdf.

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2

MacLeod, Kirsten. "Walter Pater, Oscar Wilde, and audiences of aestheticism." Thesis, McGill University, 1997. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=20442.

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By examining the process of production and reception of the works of Walter Pater and Oscar Wilde, this thesis explores the ways in which both conceptions of audience and actual audiences shaped these works. As proponents of "aestheticism," a philosophy which required the development of a highly specialised mode of perception and critical awareness, Pater and Wilde wrote with a fairly select audience in mind. Confronted, however, with actual readers who did not always meet the "aesthetic" criteria (even if they were supporters), they were forced to rethink their conceptions of audience. Pater's and Wilde's developing understandings of audience can be traced in their works, as they experiment with style and genre in an attempt to communicate effectively with their readers. Although at base Pater and Wilde advocated a similar "aesthetic" philosophy, their distinct conceptions of audience played a significant role in determining the nature of their particular versions of aestheticism.
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3

Tucker, Amanda. "Godot in Earnest: Beckettian Readings of Wilde." Thesis, University of North Texas, 2003. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc4248/.

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Critics and audiences alike have neglected the idea of Wilde as a precursor to Beckett. But I contend that a closer look at each writer's aesthetic and philosophic tendencies-for instance, their interest in the fluid nature of self, their understanding of identity as a performance, and their belief in language as both a way in and a way out of stagnancy -will connect them in surprising and highly significant ways. This thesis will focus on the ways in which Wilde prefigures Beckett as a dramatist. Indeed, many of the themes that Beckett, free from the constraints of a censor and from the societal restrictions of Victorian England, unabashedly details in his drama are to be found residing obscurely in Wilde. Understanding Beckett's major dramatic themes and motifs therefore yields new strategies for reading Wilde.
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Cavendish-Jones, Colin. "Pavilioned on nothing : nihilism and its counterforces in the works of Oscar Wilde." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/3515.

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This thesis explores the role of Nihilism in Oscar Wilde's thought and writing, beginning with the depiction of Russian Political Nihilism in Wilde's first play; Vera, or the Nihilists and tracing the engagement with philosophical Nihilism in his fiction, drama and essays, up to and including De Profundis. It is argued that Russian Political Nihilism derives from the same sources and expresses the same concerns as the philosophical Nihilism discussed by Nietzsche in The Will to Power, and that Nietzsche and Wilde, working independently, came to a strikingly similar understanding of Nihilism. Philosophical Nihilism is defined in two ways; as the complete absence of values (Absolute Nihilism) and as a sense that, while absolute values may exist, they are unattainable, unknowable or inexpressible (Relative Nihilism). Wilde uses his writing to express Nihilism while simultaneously seeking aesthetic and ethical counterforces to it, eventually coming to see Art and the life of the Artist as the ultimate forms of resistance to Nihilism. Wilde's philosophical views are examined in the context of his time, and in the light of his exceptionally wide reading. He is compared and contrasted with Nietzsche, the philosopher who has done most to shape our view of what Nihilism means, in his ethical and aesthetic response to Nihilism. The conclusion also considers the reception of Wilde's expression of Nihilism and his employment of Art as the only superior counterforce in the first half of the twentieth century, with particular reference to the works of Gide and Proust. Their engagement with Nihilism is explored both in historical context and as a way of addressing a problem which has become uniquely pervasive and pressing in the modern era.
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Van, der Merwe Stephen Gareth. "Generic engineering : a study of parody in selected works of Oscar Wilde, James Joyce and Tom Stoppard." Thesis, Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2004. http://hdl.handle.net/10019.1/49971.

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Thesis (MA)-- Stellenbosch University, 2004.
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ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The following thesis develops a theory of parody as a multifunctional practice in relation to selected works of Oscar Wilde, James Joyce and Tom Stoppard. The study discusses parody as a mode of generic engineering (rather than a genre itself) with ideological ramifications. Based on an understanding of literary and non-literary genres as social institutions, this thesis describes the practice of parody as one of engineering generic or discursive incongruity with a particular cultural purpose in mind. In refiguring generic conventions, the parodist simultaneously reworks their implicit ideological premises. Parody hence comes to serve as a means of negotiating with "the world" through generic modification, and the notions of parodic social agency and cultural work are consequently central to this thesis. Focusing on The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Importance of Being Earnest respectively, Chapters Two and Three discuss Wilde's use of parody, and especially parodic "word-masks", for subverting the aesthetic and social conventions of Victorian England, and covertly propagating a gay subculture through parodic injokes. Word-masks - central to Wildean parody - entail the duplicitous use of an object text / genre as a cover under which a parodist hides other meanings. If Wildean parody might be described as claiming a covert agency, Joycean parody must, in contrast, be acknowledged as expressing deep-seated political ambivalence. Chapters Four and Five of this thesis discuss Joyce's Ulysses with specific reference to his use of parody to conflate, relativize and problematize the dominant aesthetic and Irish nationalist discourses of the early twentieth-century. Joycean parody also demonstrates parodic ambivalence and this is especially evident in what might be called his "parodic patriotism". In contrast to Wilde's and Joyce's use of parody for the expression of subversive or progressive political views, Stoppard's parodies confirm conservative English values not only in their reification of the English canon but also in terms of the ideological premises with which they invest their hypotexts. Chapters Six and Seven examine how parody can serve as one of the ways in which modem artists have managed to come to terms with tradition. Focusing on Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead and Travesties respectively, these chapters explore parody's capacity to function as tribute or homage to the writers of the past being parodied. Ultimately this thesis aims to demonstrate the continuum of parodic cultural work or effects of which parody, as a mode of generic engineering, is capable.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: In hierdie tesis word daar - met verwysing na geselekteerde werke van Oscar Wilde, James Joyce en Tom Stoppard - 'n teorie van parodie as multi-funktionele praktyk ontwikkel. Parodie word bespreek as 'n vorm van generiese manipulasie (eerder as 'n genre op sigself) met ideologiese implikasies. Op die basis van 'n vertolking van literêre en nie-literêre genres as sosiale instellings, beskryf hierdie tesis die praktyk van parodie as die bewerkstelling van generiese en diskursiewe ongelyksoortigheid met 'n besondere kulturele oogmerk in gedagte. In die herfigurering van generiese konvensies is die beoefenaar van parodie terselfdertyd besig om hulle geïmpliseerde ideologiese aannames te herbewerk. Parodie word dus 'n metode om met behulp van generiese modifikasie in omgang met "die wêreld" te verkeer; en die idee van die sosiale agentskap en kulturele aksie van parodie staan dus ook sentraal tot hierdie tesis. Hoofstukke Twee en Drie fokus onderskeidelik op The Picture of Dorian Gray en The Importance of Being Earnest. In hierdie twee hoofstukke word Wilde se gebruik van parodie bespreek, met besondere aandag aan sy parodiese "woordmaskers" om die estetiese en sosiale konvensies van Victoriaanse Engeland te ondermyn, asook sy bedekte propagering - deur middel van parodiese binne-grappe -- van 'n gay subkultuur. Sentraal tot Wilde se parodie is woordmaskers wat 'n dubbelsinnige gebruik van teks en genre inspan as 'n dekmantel waaronder die beoefenaar van parodie ander betekenisse verskuil hou. As Wilde se parodie beskryfkan word as bedekte bemiddeling oftussenkoms (covert agency), moet Joyce se parodie - as teenstelling - identifiseer word as 'n uitdrukking van diepliggende politiese ambivalensie. In Hoofstukke Vier en Vyf word Joyce se Ulysses bespreek met spesifieke verwysing na sy gebruik van parodie om dominante estetiese en Ierse nasionalistiese diskoerse van die vroeë twintigste eeu saam te voeg, te relativiseer en te bevraagteken.. Joyce se parodie illustreer ook parodiese ambivalensie - 'n aspek wat duidelik blyk uit wat sy "parodiese patriotisme" genoem kon word. In teenstelling met Wilde en Joyce se gebruik van parodie as uitdrukking van ondermynende of pregressiewe gesigspunte, bevestig Stoppard se parodie konserwatiewe Engelse waardes nie net in hulle vergestalting van Engelse kanoniese tekste nie, maar ook in terme van die ideologiese aannames wat hulle aan hul hipotekste toeskryf. Hoofstukke Ses en Sewe ondersoek hoe parodie kan dien as een van die weë waarlangs moderne kunstenaars daarin geslaag het om hulleself te versoen met tradiese. In Hoofstukke Ses en Sewe - waar daar onderskeidelik op Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead en Travesties gefokus word - word ook aandag geskenk aan die vermoë van parodie om te funksioneer as huldeblyk of eerbetoon aan skrywers wie se werke geparodieer word. Hierdie tesis poog om die kontinuum van parodiese kulturele werk te illustreer waartoe parodie, as 'n vorm van generiese manipulasie, in staat is.
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6

Bromling, Laura Cappello, and University of Lethbridge Faculty of Arts and Science. "From the pens of the contrivers : perspectives on fiction in the nineteenth-century novel." Thesis, Lethbridge, Alta. : University of Lethbridge, Faculty of Arts and Science, 2003, 2003. http://hdl.handle.net/10133/154.

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This thesis investigates the way that moral and aesthetic concerns about the relationship between fiction and reality are manifested in the work of particular novelists writing at different periods in the nineteenth century, Chapter One examines an early-century subgenre of the novel that features deluded female readers who fail to differentiate between fantasy and reality, and who consequently attempt to live their lives according to foolish precepts learned from novels. The second chapter deals with the realist aesthetic of W. M. Thackeray; focusing on the techniques by which his fiction marks its own relationship both to less realistic fiction and to reality itself. The final chapter discusses Oscar Wilde's critical stance that art is meaningful and intellectually satisfying, while reality and realism are aesthetically worthless: it then goes on the explore how these ideas play out in his novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray.
iv, 120 leaves ; 28 cm.
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7

Kling, Jutta Cornelia. "On knowingness : irony and queerness in the works of Byron, Heine, Fontane, and Wilde." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/11824.

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This thesis identifies strategies of queer/irony in the writings of Lord Byron, Heinrich Heine, Theodor Fontane, and Oscar Wilde. Key to the understanding of irony is Friedrich Schlegel's re-evaluation of the concept. The thesis establishes an approach to the multifaceted concept of irony and identify key concepts of queer theory. The focus, however, is close reading. First, Lord Byron's epic satire Don Juan is read with regards to the interplay of narrative strategies and the depiction of gender, homoeroticism and the concept of the child. Furthermore, reviews published at the time of the publication of Don Juan are examined: Why did the reviewers reject the work so violently? Second, in Heine's Buch der Lieder we find ironic strategies that Richard Rorty subsumed into the concept of 'final vocabularies.' By acknowledging the formulaic nature of language in general and Romantic tropes in particular, Heine succeeds in subverting a heteronormative discourse on love and desire. Heine's Reisebilder – 'Die Reise von München nach Genua' and 'Die Bäder von Lucca' – depict the limits of queer/irony: Where meaning is fixed, as in the case of the Platen polemic, irony loses its propensity to contain multitudes. Third, Theodor Fontane's novels of adultery are read against the background of irony as established through a Schlegelian reading of Frau Jenny Treibel and a queer reading of Ellernklipp. The novels Unwiederbringlich and Effi Briest question notions of truth and map the danger of knowledge. At the core of this chapter lies the notion of 'knowledge management,' a strategy closely related to irony. The figure of the courtier Pentz in Unwiederbringlich becomes a harbinger of dangerous, queer knowledge similar to the way Crampas' use of Heine quotations negotiates sexually suggestive knowledge in Effi Briest. In a final step, the aforementioned queer/ironic strategies are employed to read texts by Oscar Wilde. Are the strategies as inferred in the other chapters valid for Wilde's writings as well? We find that, in a time where homoerotic behaviour was heavily sanctioned, ironic writing had become a liability. Wilde's ironies are too opaque for the reader: They have become a movement where nobody is allowed to 'play along'.
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8

Salbayre, Sébastien. "Analyse stylistique des oeuvres de fiction d'Oscar Wilde. Approche énonciative." Toulouse 2, 2000. http://www.theses.fr/2000TOU20062.

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Un certain nombre de faits stylistiques, en leur qualite de facteurs d'elaboration d'un effet esthetique, caracterisent les uvres de fiction d'oscar wilde en mettant en valeur dualite et duplication. Dans ces uvres, la representation se fait sur le mode du couplage impliquant une phase d'identification et une phase de differenciation et souligne une alterite qui confere a la macro-structure et a la micro-structure des textes la complexite configurationnelle qui les caracterise. En matiere d'homogeneite textuelle, un certain nombre d'elements, en vertu de leur pouvoir eminemment liant, jouent un role des plus cohesifs au sein des uvres considerees, permettant au lecteur de mettre en relation - sur le mode de l'anticipation ou sur celui du rappel - les etapes essentielles de la quete desheros wildiens. Cette mise en relation intervient entre le paratexte et le texte, entre l'incipit et le corps du texte, et au sein du texte lui-meme : repetitions, parallelismes, echos intra-textuels multiples, construction de reseaux analogiques, construction de reseaux de correspondances facilitent l'anticipation et l'evocation de donnees essentielles a la comprehension d'uvres qui mettent en scene des etres stereotypes evoluant dans un univers stereotype. Du point de vue de l'heterogeneite enonciative, la distance entre personnages, narrateur et auteur implicite releve moins du dialogisme que du monologue fort peu differencie. Aussi la superposition des voix releve-t-elle de la polyphonie de voix presque identiques. L'heterogeneite enonciative revele l'alterite assimilee des textes consideres (emprunts marques, intertextualite, subversion, captation). En ecrivant un roman, des nouvelles et des contes qui celebrent l'ambivalence, wilde donna naissance a des uvres breves qui, parce qu'elles font cohabiter en leur sein des tendances contradictoires, regardent, dans le miroir deformant de leur propre structure, de leur propre construction, le reflet de leur propre image.
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Gravem, Bruna Cardoso. "A game of appearances : the mask of Oscar Wilde." reponame:Biblioteca Digital de Teses e Dissertações da UFRGS, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/10183/81374.

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Esta dissertação examina as formas como três instâncias se embaraçam na arte de Oscar Wilde: a pessoa, o autor e a obra. O objetivo da pesquisa é compreender como se dá o processo criativo desse escritor, cujas peças levitam entre o irreverente e o polêmico. O humor refinado e a sagacidade na análise do trato social, traços marcantes no estilo de Wilde, são aqui aproximados à habilidade demonstrada tanto pelo autor quanto por seus personagens de se adaptarem a diferentes circunstâncias através do uso de máscaras, ou personas, que lhes possibilitam contornar situações intrincadas. Apoio-me no pensamento de Carl Gustav Jung para as teorizações sobre o conceito de máscara. O trabalho se constrói em três capítulos, nos quais são analisados aspectos e circunstâncias da vida do autor que contribuem para forjar seu estilo único, e que se refletem nas obras por ele criadas. O primeiro capítulo trata sobre a pessoa de Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde, e os movimentos que empreendeu para que sua personalidade forte e o rígido ambiente vitoriano em que vivia pudessem aos poucos se harmonizar. Abordo as formas como a sociedade em que cresceu o afetou, apontando aspectos em que ele também a influenciou em retrospecto. Ao longo desse processo, Wilde criou as máscaras que utilizaria, durante a vida, para transitar da maneira desejada entre os diversos grupos com que se relacionou. O segundo e o terceiro capítulos apresentam o autor Oscar Wilde e a sequência de diferentes tipos de obras por ele criadas, avaliando de que formas as circunstâncias da vida da pessoa se consolidaram formando o estilo do autor. Além da estética de Wilde, também é considerada a recepção de sua obra pelo público contemporâneo a ele. No segundo capítulo apresento os conceitos de máscara e de sombra, e como se refletem em sua obra e em sua vida pessoal. Ali são examinadas as primeiras tragédias e, a seguir, as obras que o tornaram um autor polêmico na Inglaterra Vitoriana: “The Portrait of Mr. W. H” e The Picture of Dorian Gray. No terceiro capítulo comento seu momento mais prestigiado, o da produção das comédias sociais, bem como o momento mais sombrio, o das obras escritas durante os anos de prisão, nos últimos anos de sua vida. Ainda discuto, no terceiro capítulo, o legado deixado por Wilde, comentando como as mudanças sociais levaram a uma nova recepção de suas obras, e como essas obras continuam relevantes tendo-se passado um século de sua criação. Nas considerações finais, reitero o propósito da pesquisa, que é contribuir com uma leitura sobre o estilo do grande escritor, com base na análise das relações que se deram entre esse irlandês excêntrico e a inclemente sociedade Vitoriana em que viveu.
This dissertation examines how three strings tangle together in Oscar Wilde’s art: the person, the author and his literary works. The goal of this research is to understand the creative process of this author, whose plays go from irreverent to polemic. The polished humor and wit applied in his analysis of social behavior, trademarks in Wilde’s writing style, approximate the ability shown by the author, as well as by his characters, to adapt to different circumstances through the use of masks, or personas, that enable them to escape intricate situations. The concept of mask is supported on Carl Gustav Jung’s theory. This paper is constructed in three chapters, in which it is analyzed aspects and circumstances of the author’s life that contributed to his unique writing style and is reflected on his literary works. The first chapter deals with the person Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde, and the movements that he partook in so that his strong personality and the strict Victorian environment could harmonize themselves in his life. This paper approaches the ways the society he was brought up into affected him, pointing out aspects in which he affected this society in return. Throughout this process Wilde created many masks that he would use his whole life to be able to navigate through different groups he was related to however he wished. The second and third chapters present the author Oscar Wilde and the sequence of different literary works written by him, evaluating how the circumstances in his personal life shaped him, creating the author’s writing style. Not only this paper considers the Aesthete in Wilde, but also the reception of his works by the public that was contemporary to him. In the second chapter it is presented the concepts of mask and shadow, and how they reflect on Wilde’s work and personal life. It is also examined his first tragedies and the literary works that made him become a polemic author in Victorian England: “The Portrait of Mr. W. H.” and The Picture of Dorian Gray. In the third chapter it is mentioned the brightest moments in his career, his comedies of society, as well as his soberest, with the work he wrote in prison and in the last few years of his life. Still in the third chapter, it is discussed the legacy left by Wilde, commenting on the social changes that led to a new reception of his works, as they continue to be relevant even a century after their creation. On my final considerations, I reiterate the goal of this research, which is to contribute with a reading on the style of this great writer, based on the analysis of the relation between this eccentric Irish man and the unmerciful Victorian society that he lived in.
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Toffoli, Tânia 1984. "O retrato de Dorian Gray : um romance em três tempos - circulacão entre Inglaterra e Brasil." [s.n.], 2013. http://repositorio.unicamp.br/jspui/handle/REPOSIP/270141.

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Orientador: Orna Messer Levin
Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem
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Resumo: O objetivo deste trabalho é comparar o contexto de publicação do único romance de Oscar Wilde, \O Retrato de Dorian Gray", na Inglaterra e no Brasil. A obra aparece pela primeira vez no Reino Unido e EUA em 1890 na Lippincott's. É editada em livro em 1891. A tradução do texto para o português, feita por João do Rio, circula no Brasil em folhetim no jornal A Noite, em 1911. A publicação em livro é feita pela Garnier, em 1923, após a morte do tradutor. A partir dessas informações, se faz relevante considerar alguns tipos de leituras que são possibilitadas nos dois casos. Para compreende-las, analisei dois aspectos ligados á estrutura do romance: o uso do narrador, pelo viés da narratologia de Genette, e a presença de descrições
Abstract: The purpose of this study is to compare the context of publication of the only novel by Oscar Wilde, \The Picture of Dorian Gray", in England and in Brazil. The work appears for the first time in UK and US in 1890 at Lippincott's. It is edited as a book in 1891. The translation of the text in Portuguese, by Joao do Rio, circulates in Brazil as feuilleton at the newspaper A Noite, in 1911. The publication as book is made by Garnier, in 1923, after the death of the translator. From this information, it is relevant to consider some types of readings enabled by these two cases. To understand them, I've analyzed two aspects concerning the structure of the novel: the use of the narrator, by bias of narratology of Genette, and the presence of descriptions
Mestrado
Historia e Historiografia Literaria
Mestra em Teoria e História Literária
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Robson, Julie-Ann. "Beneath the socratic cloak : Oscar Wilde and the art of criticism." Phd thesis, 2003. http://hdl.handle.net/1885/148762.

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Kinsella, Paul. ""We must return to the voice" : oral values and traditions in the works of Oscar Wilde." Thesis, 2002. http://hdl.handle.net/2429/13083.

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This study examines the literary career of Oscar Wilde as the formation and expression of a sensibility exhibiting highly developed powers of both orality and literacy. In other words, Wilde's work and life reveal the mind of both a talented writer and a talker par excellence, and this inquiry explores the development and co-existence of the two modes, in particular as they manifest themselves in Wilde's writing and in his relations with the societies in which he found himself. Chapter One discusses the balance between Wilde's talk and his writing as it was experienced by W. B . Yeats, who emerges as a very persistent and perceptive biographer of this aspect of Wilde's genius. The theoretical framework and terminology developed by Walter J. Ong (1982) is also brought to bear on the discussion as a further illumination of Yeats's accounts. Chapter Two presents an outline of some aspects of the history and culture of Ireland which might explain the formation of a dual sensibility such as Wilde's. In Chapter Three this line of inquiry is extended further into the domestic circumstances in which Wilde grew up, focussing in particular on the influence of his tutor at Trinity, J. P. Mahaffy. A discussion of the links between Wilde and Mahaffy includes consideration of the parallels between their written works, culminating in an interpretation, at the end of the chapter, of the origins and dynamics o f Wilde's essay "The Decay of Lying." Chapter Four continues to explore the links between Mahaffy and Wilde, but shifts the focus to their mutual classicism, which also provides a lens through which to view the further development of Wilde's dual oral/chirographic sensibility at Oxford, symbolized in the person and the work of Walter Pater. I then offer a reading of "The Critic as Artist" as an expression of Wilde's Oxford literary idealism, expressed through his call to "return to the voice." From there this study moves to a discussion of Wilde's subsequent life and work in terms o f a combined orality and literacy. Chapter Five is devoted to an exploration o f the power of the voice and the spoken word in The Picture of Dorian Gray, and Chapter Six examines the spoken stories, Salome, and The Importance of Being Earnest through a similar perspective. The Conclusion extends the analysis to Wilde's trial and prison sentence, his last works including De Profundis, and his final years as a storyteller in Paris.
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Punchard, Tracy Kathleen. "Art, criticism, and the self : at play in the works of Oscar Wilde." Thesis, 1998. http://hdl.handle.net/2429/10928.

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This thesis explores the works of Oscar Wilde as they articulate and model an aesthetic of play. I show that Wilde distinguishes between true and false forms--or what I call models and anti-models--of play in a number of areas: art, criticism, and society, language, thought, and culture, self and other. My introduction establishes a context for the cultural value of play in the nineteenth century. I survey the ideas of Friedrich Schiller, who treats play in the aesthetic realm; Matthew Arnold, who discusses Criticism as a free play of the mind; Herbert Spencer, who explores play in the context of evolution; and Johan Huizinga, who analyses play in its social context. In my three chapters on Wilde's critical essays, I draw upon their ideas to describe Wilde's philosophy of play and examine how the form of Wilde's critical essays illuminates his aesthetic. My first chapter explores models and anti-models of play in Art, as they are described by Vivian in "The Decay of Lying." By exploring the role of "lying" in its aesthetic rather ethical context, Vivian demonstrates the value of the play-spirit for the development of culture. My second chapter discusses models and anti-models of play in Criticism as they are described by Gilbert in "The Critic as Artist." By refashioning the traditions of nineteenth-century criticism, Gilbert presents his own model of criticism as an aesthetic activity and demonstrates the role of the play-spirit in the development of the individual and the race. My third chapter relates models and anti-models of play in art, criticism, and social life to the modes of self-realization described by Wilde in "The Soul of Man Under Socialism." I take up Wilde's well-known paradox, that Socialism is a means of realizing Individualism, by showing how Wilde plays with these terms in an aesthetic rather than a political context. In the remaining chapters I read Wilde's fictional and dramatic texts in light of his aesthetics and treat the characters as models and anti-models of the play-spirit. In The Picture of Dorian Gray, I take the measure of play, not morality, as a guide for interpretation. In this reading Lord Henry Wotton is the novel's critic as artist, while Dorian Gray, with his literal-mindedness, his imitative instinct, and his ruthless narcissism, fails to achieve the aesthetic disinterestedness that characterizes true play. My sixth chapter traces themes related to play—game, ceremony, and performance—in Wilde's Society Comedies to demonstrate how these plays both reflect and critique the spectacle of Society and the conventions of nineteenth-century melodrama. My thesis concludes with The Importance of Being Earnest as it presents a culmination of Wilde's play-spirit and his playful linguistic strategies. I show how both the form and content of Earnest model the paradoxical ideal of play itself—that through play we may realize the experience of being at one with ourselves and on good terms with the world.
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Grewar, Debra Suzanne. "`The love that dare not speak its name' in the works of Oscar Wilde." Diss., 2005. http://hdl.handle.net/10500/1959.

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Victorian society had strict written and unwritten laws about what was permissible in terms of personal relationships. Anglican patriarchal church values governed behaviour between the classes and enforced codes of conduct on gender related boundaries of private individuals. Society subscribed to the traditional family of man, woman and children in the context of marriage. Homosexuality amongst men was punishable by prison. Government and religion preached Christian morality, yet the number of prostitutes had never been greater. This dissertation explores the problems of a pro-homosexual and anti-establishment Victorian author writing about human relationships forbidden by society. It exposes the consequences suffered by Oscar Wilde due to his investigative insights into the `Other' in the context of individual rights of preference in regard to sexual orientation, as expressed in selected texts, and his resolution of conflict, in De Profundis.
English Studies
MA (English)
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15

Norman, Douglas Everett. "Performing that-which-will-become posthuman and queer bodies in the works of Heinrich von Kleist and Oscar Wilde." Thesis, 2005. http://hdl.handle.net/2152/2325.

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16

"Social influence and the human aspiration for freedom: two fictions of duality in the late Victorian age." 2002. http://library.cuhk.edu.hk/record=b5891168.

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Abstract:
Lee Kar Man Ida.
Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2002.
Includes bibliographical references (leaves 101-108).
Abstracts in English and Chinese.
Abstract --- p.i
論文提要 --- p.iii
Acknowledgements --- p.v
"Introduction The Victorian Age, the Literary Double and Freedom" --- p.1
Chapter Chapter I --- Struggle against Restraints: Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde --- p.24
Chapter Chapter II --- The Ambition to Transgress: Locating Freedom in Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray --- p.52
Chapter Chapter III --- Jekyll and Dorian: Impossible Mission to Achieve an Unrestrained Freedom against the Social Orthodoxy --- p.77
Works Cited List --- p.101
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17

"A study of Oscar Wilde's The picture of Dorian Gray, E.M. Forster's Maurice and John Rechy's City of night in relation to the self-identity of the the "gays"." 2001. http://library.cuhk.edu.hk/record=b5890775.

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Abstract:
Wong Nga-lai.
Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2001.
Includes bibliographical references (leaves 108-112).
Abstracts in English and Chinese.
Acknowledgements --- p.i
Abstract --- p.ii-v
Introduction
Homosexuality: a sin versus a choice --- p.1 -5
Chapter Chapter One --- Wilde and his sacrifices --- p.6 -38
Chapter Chapter Two --- Forster and his private novel --- p.39 -70
Chapter Chapter Three --- Rechy and his new order --- p.71-104
Conclusion
Still a long way to go --- p.105 -107
Selected Bibliography --- p.108-112
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