The Wilde Century [Paperback]

Alan Sinfield (Author)

Book Description

Series: Between Men-Between Women: Lesbian & Gay Studies | Publication Date: October 15, 1994

For 15 years in Victorian England, Oscar Wilde was able to carry on like the famous camp queen of our imaginings - effete, leisured, aesthetic, amoral, decadent, dandified. This work explores how Wilde was seen before the trials that ended his career and made him the most famous queer man since Socrates. In particular, it examines the concept of effeminacy and asks how Wilde's effeminacy was perceived. In examining these points, Sinfield ranges over issues of identity, subculture, race, style, masculinity, homophobia, genetics and gender-bending. He broaches the thesis that the Wilde trials bring into focus a particular image of the queer man which has extended into the 20th century, and that our stereotypical notion of male homosexuality derives from Wilde and our ideas about him. Sinfield assesses the strategic options for lesbian and gay subcultures today. This provocative book aspires to set the agenda for a gay cultural politics - a hundred years after the Wilde trials, on the threshold of the 21st century.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Like all great artists, Oscar Wilde - and his work - can encompass a wide variety of meaning and discussion. In The Wilde Century British scholar and critic Alan Sinfield uses "Wilde" as both example and symbol of the changing meanings of "effeminacy" in modern culture.

To a large degree Wilde's "foppishness," seemingly flippant satire, and "art for art's sake" aesthetic has defined both the nature and social attitude of homosexuality for the past 100 years. By examining Wilde's work, as well as a broad range of other topics--from E. M. Forster's and Ronald Firbank's novels to the post-modern theories of Judith Butler and Eve Kosofsky Sedgewick--Sinfield explores how ideas about gender and morality have shaped the very core of how we define art and politics. In Sinfield's impressive, even dazzling analysis, Wilde is both the generator and the touchstone for a contemporary queer sensibility in which creativity, social change, and a clear vision of a better world can become a reality. --Michael Bronski

From Library Journal

In this rich and provocative study, Sinfield (English, Sussex Univ.) challenges prevailing cultural notions of effeminacy and homosexuality. Sinfield's wide-ranging argument traces the often complex coupling of effeminacy and same-sex relations from Plato and Shakespeare to Wilde and beyond. His masterly readings of this genealogy demonstrate that the trials of Wilde were the turning point for the cultural determination of the equivalency of effeminacy and sodomy. From such evidence, Sinfield opposes the Freudian essentialist view of sexuality to conclude that homosexuality is already socially constructed by the universalizing cultural discourses of class, gender, and sexuality. Sinfield's book joins Eve Sedgwick's Between Men (Columbia Univ. Pr., 1985) as a crucial study of the inextricable bond between the cultural construction of gender and the social construction of homosexuality. Highly recommended for all collections in cultural studies.
Henry L. Carrigan Jr., Westerville P.L., Ohio
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Paperback: 216 pages
• Publisher: Columbia University Press (October 15, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0231101678
• ISBN-13: 978-0231101677
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,307,365 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the best gay literary studies in the past decade, November 20, 2001

By 

Jay Dickson (Portland, OR) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Wilde Century (Paperback)

After a spate of books in queer studies anachronistically identifying this or that work as "gay," Alan Sinfield produced this thoughtful, accessible book that gives gay readings their due while simultaneously attempting to read things with a sense of historical responsibility, postulating the Oscar Wilde trial of 1896 as a marker for the formation of a queer identity that incorporates effeminacy into its battery of indicators. A smart, responsible, and well-written study.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Flaming, July 13, 2000

By 

Curmudgeon "grantc" (West Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Wilde Century (Paperback)

"The Wilde Century" positions Oscar Wilde as the archetypal queer of the 20th Century (although perhaps not too far beyond), and as such it's insightful and enormously entertaining. Those not familiar with gender studies will marvel as Sinfield neatly constructs a convincing paradigm of queer/homosexual history. If you'd like a readable introduction to the germ of queer theory I'd recommend this book.