Acting Wilde

Victorian Sexuality, Theatre, and Oscar Wilde

Kerry Powell author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Cambridge University Press

Published:16th Jun '11

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Acting Wilde cover

A revealing insight into Wilde's courtroom trials as they really happened, examining his deep immersion in late Victorian gender wars.

Introducing important evidence from the recently discovered written record of Oscar Wilde's first courtroom trial, Acting Wilde explores Wilde's strategic dramatising of himself. The resulting portrait is of an Oscar Wilde who anticipates and even surpasses the insights of contemporary critical theory while laying the foundation for 'modern drama'.'I love acting - it is so much more real than life,' Oscar Wilde famously wrote. Acting Wilde demonstrates that Wilde's plays, fiction, and critical theory are organised by the idea that all so-called 'reality' is a mode of performance, and that the 'meanings' of life are really the scripted elements of a dramatic spectacle. Wilde's real issue was whether one could become the author of his own script, the creator of the character and role he inhabits. It was a question he struggled to answer from the beginning of his career to the end, whether in his position as the pre-eminent dramatist in English or as the beleaguered defendant on trial for 'gross indecency'. Introducing important evidence from Wilde's career-launching tour of America, the often tortured revisions of his plays, and the recently discovered written record of his first courtroom trial, this book reconstructs Wilde's strategic dramatising of himself.

'… Powell's book is distinctive for its historicizing approach and its well-informed reliance on pre-publication materials …' Modern Drama

ISBN: 9780521283380

Dimensions: 229mm x 152mm x 12mm

Weight: 300g

216 pages