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WILDE'S RENAISSANCE: POISON, PASSION, AND PERSONALITY
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 June 2007
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IN 1877, AS AN OXFORD UNDERGRADUATE, Oscar Wilde was invited to fill out two pages of a “Confession Album,” an informal survey of his likes, dislikes, ambitions, and fears. Wilde's answers testify to his deep appreciation for all things Greek: his favorite authors include Plato, Sappho, and Theocritus; he would hate to part with his Euripides; he admires Alexander the Great. But when faced with a question regarding the place he would most like to live, Wilde chooses not Athens or Argos but “Florence and Rome”; and when asked about the historical period in which he would most liked to have lived, Wilde opts for “the Italian Renaissance” (Holland 44–45). As there was no room on the form for Wilde to expand on this statement, we can only speculate as to why he saw Renaissance Italy as a time and a place in which he would have felt at home. But what the response tells us for certain is that while he was at Oxford, Wilde found the culture of Quattro- and Cinquecento Italy particularly appealing, was comfortable imagining himself as part of that period, and was prepared to acknowledge his enthusiasm for the period to his friends. Moreover, it shows that while Wilde may have treasured the cultural artifacts of ancient Greece as a young man, he was more eager to experience the whole way of life captured in the idea of the Italian Renaissance.
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