Oscar Wilde Eros and Aesthetics

207 Pages·1991·19 MB·English

by  Patricia Flanagan Behrendt (auth.)

OSCAR WILDE: EROS AND AESTHETICS
Oscar Wilde
Eros and Aesthetics
Patricia Flanagan Behrendt
Assistant Professor of Theatre,
University of Nebraska, Lincoln
Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN 978-1-349-21659-8 ISBN 978-1-349-21657-4 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-21657-4
© Patricia Flanagan Behrendt, 1991
Softcover reprint of the bardeover 1st edition 1991
All rights reserved. For information, write:
Scholarly and Reference Division,
St. Martin's Press, Inc., 175 Fifth Avenue,
New York, N.Y. 10010
First published in the United States of America in 1991
ISBN 978-0-312-06576-8
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Behrendt, Patricia Flanagan.
Oscar Wilde: eros and asthetics/Parricia Flanagan Behrendt.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-312-06576-8
1. Wilde, Oscar, 1854-190o--criticism and interpretation.
2. Wilde, Oscar, 1854-1900-Aesthetics. 3. Sex in literature.
I. Title.
PR5827.S48B44 1991
828' .809-dc20 91-13780
CIP
To Stephen C. Behrendt
Contents
Note on the Title IX
Note on Texts xi
Preface xii
1 Eros and Aesthetics 1
Eros and Aesthetic Judgment 1
Sex and Critical Discourse 5
Wilde in Context: The Politics of Sexual Discourse in
Nineteenth-Century England 9
Sexual Studies: The Burden of Myth 16
2 Sexual Drama in the Early Poetry 21
The Honey of Romance: Homoeroticism in the Early
Poetry 21
The "Sovereign of the Insufferables" and His
Contemporary Critics 2 7
Wilde and Pater: The Importance of Being Musical 33
Blind Eros: Sexual Conflict in the Early Poetry 3 7
Wilde and W omen: Images of Fernale and Male
Sexuality in the Short Poems 55
3 Sexuality and Death: The Fate of Wilde's
Heterosexual Lovers 63
Vera; Or, The Nihilists 65
The Duchess of Padua 7 4
4 Eroticism and the Dialogic Form 93
"Who do you think seduced me ... little Robbie" 93
Wilde and the Cult of Personality 100
Eroticism and the Critical Dialogues 105
vii
viii Contents
5 The Dandy Coup de Thititre: Homosexual Eros and
the London Stage 119
Lady Windermere's Fan: The Dandy Unbound 127
A Woman of No Importance: The Dandy Devil in the
Garden 147
The Dandy as An Ideal Husband 158
Ferocious Idyll; or The Importance of Being Earnest 166
Epilogue: Speaking the Unspeakahle 179
Note s 183
Select Bibliography 190
Index 192
Note on the Title
In the broadest sense, the implicit connedion between Eros and
aesthetics lies in the fad that both are ways of accounting for
processes of creation; the first is a prima! and archetypal way of
symbolizing the mythic creation of the earth; the latter refers to an
academic system of dodrines. While Eros is an ancient mythic figure
at the center of creation mythology who is said to have emerged
from an enormaus egg to create the earth, aesthetics, on the other
hand, is the study of how artistic creations achieve meaning. The
two are linked uniquely, however, in the study of the works of
Oscar Wilde. The more popular frivolaus image of Oscar Wilde as a
decadent dandy overshadows his role both as a Classics scholar,
familiar with the classical concept of Eros in Creek mythology, and
as theorist in aesthetics. As the following text demonstrates, the
study of the development of Wilde's aesthetics, both as writer and
as theorist, reveals that at the core of his work is his own
exploration of the complex sexual themes associated with the
Classical concept of Eros.
The early religion conneded Eros, who was originally both male
and female, with sexuality as the central expression of the life force.
Over time, the image of Eros has evolved into that of the
mischievous childlike figure whose arrows inspire passion in his
vidims. In Classical thought, however, Eros represents the more
serious concept of erotic passion or erotic Iove and the corollary
threat it poses to reason and to self-control. It is this very theme of
the threat to reason represented by the passions that forms a core
conflict in Wilde's writings from the earliest poetry to the social
comedies. But the Classical concept of Eros is even more complex
than its association with the conflid between the desires of the mind
and the body and, likewise, even more relevant to the study of the
works of Oscar Wilde. One of the more overlooked aspeds of the
concept of Eros is the bisexuality of the original image which
essentially frees it from what we would today call gender specific
stereotypes. Thus the early image of Eros suggests a being that is
complete unto itself or self-contained; likewise, Eros may be
attraded outwardly by either or by both sexes simultaneously.
Such is the complexity of the image as an allegorical figure which, in
ix
X Note on the Title
its bisexuality, symbolizes the roles of both heteroerotic and
homoerotic passion in the human being' s complex struggles to
know itself. The complex theme of seif-eentered sexual passion
which exists prior to the seledion of a love objed outside oneself
a theme which refleds both heteroerotic and homoerotic passion
centered in the individual psyche- is basic to, Oscar Wilde's works
and to his aesthetic outlook. I use the term Eros throughout the text
to embrace the complexity of the sexual themes, allusions, anxieties,
and delights which his works contain.
N otes on Texts
All quotations from Wilde' s poetry and plays are taken from the
edition of The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde, in one volume,
originally published in Great Britain by William Collins Sons & Co.,
Ud. in 1966, and newly reprinted by Harper & Row, New York,
1989 (reproduced with permission). Page numbers in parentheses for
quotations from Wilde's letters refer to The Letters of Oscar Wilde, ed.
Rupert Hart-Davis (New York. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1962).
xi