The Trials of Oscar Wilde: Deviance, Morality, and Late-Victorian Society [Hardcover]

Prof. Michael S. Foldy (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 20, 1997

Following Oscar Wilde's 1895 trials for committing "acts of gross indecency with men," he lost his freedom, his family, his reputation, his will to create, and even his will to live. This book sets out to examine what it was about late-Victorian society that allowed this to happen, indeed needed it to happen, and what the trials tell us about the taste and morals of late-Victorian England.

Editorial Reviews

Review

One hundred years after his death, Oscar Wilde reigns on stage and screen. The bizarre success of Gross Indecency--a clunky, unimaginative theatrical reenactment of Wilde's "sodomy trials," portraying the complicated Wilde as a sort of wounded Felix Unger--and the forthcoming movie starring Stephen Fry attest to a sudden interest in Wilde as character. And character he was: leader of the fin-de-siècle Aestheticist movement, flamboyant dresser, wonderfully witty talker, Wilde--a clever but never "great" playwright/novelist/poet/essayist--was essentially famous for being famous, and for being homosexual in an age during which Britain was deciding what sexual deviance meant and whether to punish it. In The Trials of Oscar Wilde: Deviance, Morality And Late Victorian Society historian Michael S. Foldy advances a theory: Wilde, who was imprisoned for "indecent acts" with men, served as whipping-boy for larger societal anxieties over "moral health"--and as scapegoat for the crimes of Lord Rosebery, the homosexual Prime Minister. While several books already interpret Wilde's trial as a social mirror, Foldy manages to unearth interesting aspects of the case, and the Rosebery angle is intriguing. Wilde fans would do well to skip the play and check out the trial transcripts and Foldy's analysis instead.
Copyright © 1996, Boston Review. All rights reserved. -- From The Boston Review

Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press; 1st UK edition (October 20, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300071124
• ISBN-13: 978-0300071122
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,731,377 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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