Wilde the Irishman Book

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 BronskiRead More