Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-c4f8m Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-18T04:42:14.266Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

REVISITING THE “IRISH DIMENSION” IN OSCAR WILDE'S THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 March 2014

Richard Haslam
Richard Haslam*
Affiliation:
Saint Joseph's University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The concept of “The Irish Wilde” achieved considerable prominence during the 1990s, due to the advocacy and scholarship of Davis Coakley, Owen Dudley Edwards, Declan Kiberd, Jerusha McCormack, Richard Pine, and David Upchurch, among others. However, as the decade drew to a close, the scholarly calibration of distinctively Irish elements in Wilde's literary works began to become a matter of dispute. In his 2000 survey of emerging trends, Ian Small listed “The Irish Wilde,” along with “The Gay Wilde” and “Wilde & Consumerism,” as significant “recent paradigms” (Recent 38, 37-78). Nonetheless, he cautioned that such thematic pigeonholes as Irishness and gayness may “rely upon highly selective details of the life which in turn are used to instruct us in how to read the works” (7). Small's wariness resurfaced in his judgment that some contributions in McCormack's anthology Wilde the Irishman “are highly speculative and seem to strain to make connections,” so that “the ‘Irish dimension’ (for the want of a better term) seems rather gratuitously tacked on” (67). These reservations about methodology were subsequently echoed by Bruce Bashford, who critiqued the strategy of “reasoning by analogy” employed by Kiberd and Pine in their attempts to Hibernicize Wilde's works (617).

Type
Research Article
Information
Victorian Literature and Culture , Volume 42 , Issue 2 , June 2014 , pp. 267 - 279
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

WORKS CITED

Archer, William. Letter. Scots Observer 2 Aug. 1890: 280–81.Google Scholar
Bashford, Bruce. “When Critics Disagree: Recent Approaches to Oscar Wilde.” Victorian Literature and Culture 30.2 (2002): 613–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blackburn, Vernon. Letter. Scots Observer 2 Aug. 1890: 279–80.Google Scholar
Bristow, Joseph, ed. Introduction. The Picture of Dorian Gray. By Oscar Wilde. Complete Works 3: xi–lx.Google Scholar
Bristow, Joseph, ed. Wilde Writings: Contextual Conditions. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2003.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown, T. E. Letter. Scots Observer 9 Aug. 1890: 304.Google Scholar
“By the Nose.” National Observer 4 Apr. 1891: 498–99.Google Scholar
Coakley, Davis. Oscar Wilde: The Importance of Being Irish. Dublin: Town House, 1994.Google Scholar
Cobban, J. MacLaren. Letter. Scots Observer 9 Aug. 1890: 304–05.Google Scholar
Cobban, J. MacLaren. Letter. Scots Observer 23 Aug. 1890: 357.Google Scholar
“Crumbs of Criticism.” Scots Observer 12 July 1890: 202–03.Google Scholar
Deane, Seamus, ed. The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing. 3 vols. Derry: Field Day, 1991.Google Scholar
“The Decadence of St. Andrews.” Scots Observer 26 July 1890: 241.Google Scholar
Edwards, Owen Dudley. “Impressions of an Irish Sphinx.” Ed. Jerusha McCormack. 47–70.Google Scholar
Edwards, Owen Dudley. “The Soul of Man Under Hibernicism.” Irish Studies Review 11 (Summer 1995): 7–13.Google Scholar
Edwards, Owen Dudley, ed. Introduction. The Fireworks of Oscar Wilde. By Wilde, Oscar. London: Barrie and Jenkins, 1989. 11–38.Google Scholar
“G.” Letter. Scots Observer 6 Sept. 1890: 410–11.Google Scholar
Graham, P. Anderson. Letter. Scots Observer 23 Aug. 1890: 357–58.Google Scholar
Guy, Josephine. “‘The Soul of Man under Socialism’: A (Con)Textual History.” Ed. Bristow. Wilde Writings. 59–85.Google Scholar
Guy, Josephine, ed. Introduction. Criticism: Historical Criticism, Intentions, The Soul of Man. By Oscar Wilde. Complete Works 4: xix–lxxxvi.Google Scholar
Guy, Josephine, and Small, Ian. Oscar Wilde's Profession: Writing and the Culture Industry in the Late Nineteenth Century. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2000.Google Scholar
“H.” Letter. Scots Observer 26 July 1890: 253–54.Google Scholar
“H.”. Letter. Scots Observer 9 Aug. 1890: 303–04.Google Scholar
“H.”. Letter. Scots Observer 30 Aug. 1890: 384.Google Scholar
Haslam, Richard. “Melmoth (OW): Gothic Modes in The Picture of Dorian Gray.” Irish Studies Review 12.3 (Dec. 2004): 303–14.Google Scholar
[Henley, W. E.]. Note. Scots Observer 12 July 1890: 202.Google Scholar
Henley, W. E.The Selected Letters of W. E. Henley. Ed. Atkinson, Damian. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000.Google Scholar
Kiberd, Declan. Anglo-Irish Attitudes. Derry: Field Day Publications, 1984.Google Scholar
Kiberd, Declan. Inventing Ireland: The Literature of the Modern Nation. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1995.Google Scholar
Kiberd, Declan. Irish Classics. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2001.Google Scholar
Killeen, Jarlath. The Faiths of Oscar Wilde: Catholicism, Folklore and Ireland. Houndsmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
King, Mary. “Typing Dorian Gray: Wilde and the Interpellated Text.” Irish Studies Review 9.1 (2001): 15–24.Google Scholar
Kipling, Rudyard. “Barrack-Room Ballads. XIII. Belts.” Scots Observer 26 July 1890: 252–53.Google Scholar
Kipling, Rudyard. “Cleared.” Scots Observer 8 Mar. 1890: 424.Google Scholar
Lawler, Donald. An Inquiry into Oscar Wilde's Revisions of The Picture of Dorian Gray. New York: Garland, 1988.Google Scholar
Markey, Anne. Oscar Wilde's Fairy Tales: Origins and Contexts. Dublin: Irish Academic, 2011.Google Scholar
Mason, Stuart. Oscar Wilde: Art & Morality: A Record of the Discussion Which Followed the Publication of Dorian Gray. (1907). New York: Haskell House, 1971. Rpt. of 1912 ed.Google Scholar
McCaw, Neil, ed. Writing Irishness in Nineteenth-Century British Culture. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004.Google Scholar
McCormack, Jerusha, ed. Wilde the Irishman. New Haven: Yale UP, 1998.Google Scholar
McCormack, W. J. “Wilde and Parnell.” Ed. Jerusha McCormack. 95–102.Google Scholar
“National Types. In England.” Scots Observer 16 Aug. 1890: 329–30.Google Scholar
“National Types. In France.” Scots Observer 11 Oct. 1890: 536–37.Google Scholar
“National Types. In Germany.” Scots Observer 1 Nov. 1890: 610–11.Google Scholar
“National Types. In Ireland.” Scots Observer 27 Sept. 1890: 484–86.Google Scholar
“National Types. In Scotland.” Scots Observer 30 Aug. 1890: 378–79.Google Scholar
“The New Nigger Question.” National Observer 17 Jan. 1891: 214–15.Google Scholar
Ní Fhlathúin, Máire. “The Irish Oscar Wilde: Appropriations of the Artist.” Irish Studies Review 7.3 (1999): 337–46.Google Scholar
Notes. Scots Observer 5 July 1890: 159–61.Google Scholar
Notes. National Observer 20 Dec. 1890: 109–11.Google Scholar
O'Connor, Maureen. “The Picture of Dorian Gray as Irish National Tale.” McCaw. 194–209.Google Scholar
Peters, John. “Wilde's Faiths” [rev. of Killeen]. ELT 50.2 (2007): 224–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pine, Richard. The Thief of Reason: Oscar Wilde and Modern Ireland. Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1995.Google Scholar
Price, Graham. Rev. of Killeen. Irish University Review 36.1 (2006): 244–48.Google Scholar
Rose, D. C. “To Each His or Her Own Wilde” [rev. of Killeen]. Irish Literary Supplement Fall 2006: 26.Google Scholar
Small, Ian. Oscar Wilde: Recent Research. A Supplement to “Oscar Wilde Revalued.” Greensboro: ELT, 2000.Google Scholar
Taylor, Dennis. “The Old Faith, ‘The Old Sod,’ and the New Critical Openness” [rev. of Killeen]. Religion and the Arts 14 (2010): 459–66.Google Scholar
“Thersites” [Charles Whibley]. Letter. Scots Observer 26 July 1890: 253.Google Scholar
Upchurch, David A. Wilde's Use of Irish Celtic Elements in The Picture of Dorian Gray. New York: Peter Lang, 1992.Google Scholar
Whibley, Charles. Letter. Scots Observer 19 July 1890: 226–27.Google Scholar
Whibley, Charles. Letter. Scots Observer 2 Aug. 1890: 279.Google Scholar
Whibley, Charles. Letter. Scots Observer 9 Aug. 1890: 303.Google Scholar
[Whibley, Charles.] “Reviews and Magazines.” Scots Observer 5 July 1890: 181.Google Scholar
Whyte, Walter. Letter. Scots Observer 16 Aug. 1890: 332.Google Scholar
Whyte, Walter. Letter. Scots Observer 23 Aug. 1890: 356–57.Google Scholar
Wilde, Oscar.The Complete Letters of Oscar Wilde. Ed. Holland, Merlin and Hart-Davis, Rupert. New York: Holt, 2000.Google Scholar
Wilde, Oscar.. The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde. III. The Picture of Dorian Gray. Ed. Bristow, Joseph. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2005.Google Scholar
Wilde, Oscar.. The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde. IV. Criticism: Historical Criticism, Intentions, The Soul of Man. Ed. Guy, Josephine M.. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2007.Google Scholar
Wilde, Oscar.. The Fireworks of Oscar Wilde. Ed. Dudley Edwards, Owen. London: Barrie and Jenkins, 1989.Google Scholar
Wilde, Oscar.. Letter. Scots Observer 2 Aug. 1890: 279.Google Scholar
Wilde, Oscar.. Letter. Scots Observer 16 Aug. 1890: 332–33.Google Scholar
Wilde, Oscar.. “Mr. Wilde's Rejoinder.” Scots Observer 12 July 1890: 201–02.Google Scholar
Wilde, Oscar.. “A Preface to ‘Dorian Gray’.” Fortnightly Review 1 Mar. 1891: 480–81.Google Scholar
Wilde, Oscar.. Reviews. (1908). London: Dawsons of Pall Mall, 1969.Google Scholar
Wilde, Oscar.. “The Soul of Man under Socialism.” Fortnightly Review 1 Feb. 1891: 292–319.Google Scholar
“The Writer of Crumbs of Criticism.” Letter. Scots Observer 26 July 1890: 253.Google Scholar
Zimmermann, Georges Denis. Songs of Irish Rebellion: Irish Political Street Ballads and Rebel Songs, 1780-1900. 1966. 2nd ed. Dublin: Four Courts, 2002.Google Scholar