Wilde the Irishman [Hardcover]

Dr. Jerusha McCormack (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 30, 1998

For nearly a century, Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) has been seen primarily as a "British" writer - a description that ignores his Irish parentage and the experience of the first 20 years of his life. In this study, 17 leading Irish artists, critics and cultural commentators explore the theme of Wilde's Irishness. Viewing Wilde from a range of angles, the contributors assess what difference it makes to perceive him as Irish, or Anglo-Irish, rather than as a British writer. The intention is to restore the author to his native context and to the cultural inheritance of an Irishman who spent much of his life in England. In its first section, the book presents a sequence of critical essays by such Irish writers, critics and commentators as Declan Kiberd, Angela Bourke, Bernard O'Donoghue and Fintan O'Toole. The second section aims to give some indication of the creative response to Wilde by some of Ireland's artists: among them poets, playwrights, sculptors, a short story writer and an actor. The book closes with Seamus Heaney's dedication of the Wilde window at Poet's Corner, Westminster Abbey. While the contributors to this volume reach a consensus about the essential Irishness of Wilde, they subvert the categories in which Wilde generally has been placed and highlight the difficulties of evaluating him within a cultural context. The book sets Wilde within the tradition of other Irish writers, including Joyce, Beckett, Shaw and Yeats - a tradition from which he has been previously excluded - and restores him to his place as an Irish writer of distinction.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Oscar Wilde is generally considered a great British author, but by nationality and temperament Wilde was Anglo-Irish. Not only did he spend the first twenty years of his life in Ireland, but the most important influence on his life was his mother, Lady Jane Francesca Wilde, an avid Irish nationalist who wrote political pamphlets under the name Speranza. Wilde The Irishman is a collection of 17 pieces--mostly essays, but a poem, play fragment, and elegy as well--that elucidate the influence of Wilde's background on his life and work. The essays here range from a discussion of Wilde's misogyny, the relationship between Wilde's writing and that of E. F. Benson (author of the Lucia novels), the effect of Home Rule debates on Wilde's public identity, and the reception of Wilde's work in the context of racist British sentiment that viewed the Irish as less than human.

Wilde The Irishman places Wilde in a broadly defined political context, and locates his social and artistic critiques in his experience as an Irish cultural exile. Many of these pieces also, quite convincingly, trace Wilde's social criticism to his homosexuality and make clear connections between the his national and sexual disenfranchisement, providing both an important addition to Wilde scholarship and an understanding of the interconnections between nationality and sexual identity. --Michael Bronski

From Booklist

During his lifetime, Oscar Wilde claimed both English and Irish roots, but intervening generations have classified his work as English (not Irish) literature. "What difference does it make to read [Wilde] as Irish?" McCormack asks in his introduction, and nearly 20 authors--academics, poets, playwrights, journalists, and an actor--respond. Perhaps the most well known contributor is Nobel Prize^-winning poet Seamus Heaney. Some essays are rather academic (with a reference to Derrida here and there), but their range of subjects--from Wilde's relationship with the Irish oral tradition and with Parnell to his attitudes toward science, scapegoats, and Jesse James (murdered while Wilde was on a U.S. tour)--and genuine appreciation for this particular wild Irish boy will reward reader attention. Where interest in Wilde or in Irish literature is strong, this collection of analysis and celebration of the writer one contributor dubs "an Irish Sphinx" should find readers. Mary Carroll

Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press (March 30, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300072961
• ISBN-13: 978-0300072969
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,485,860 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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