Year: 2016

Article

A Moment of Gravity

Oscar Wilde Blog1 Comment
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A Poignant Moment at the Falls

You may recall that in my recent review of Wilde and Niagara I cited the entry that Oscar Wilde’s had made in the guestbook of his hotel on the Canadian side at Niagara Falls.

Well, having visited the area myself, I now have an illustration of his inscription (above) and, to reiterate, this is what it says:

the roar of these waters is like the roar when the “mighty wave democracy breaks against the shores where kings lie couched at ease.”

When Oscar wrote this he was doing several things at once.

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Article

Niagara Falls

Oscar Wilde Blog4 Comments
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Next month I go to speak at the Oscar Wilde conference “Wilde on the Borders” at Niagara University in Niagara Falls, N.Y.

Whenever I travel to give a talk on Wilde, especially to places such as in New York City, Brooklyn, or Philadelphia, where Wilde also lectured, I always feel that I am following in his footsteps. After all, we share the same mission: that of promoting Oscar Wilde.

Going With The Flow

It is the now the turn of Niagara Falls, and, although Wilde did not speak publicly there (he lectured in nearby in Buffalo, New York), he did take a sojourn from his tour to visit Niagara and play tourist for a couple of days.

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Announcement

Wilde on the Borders

Oscar Wilde Blog3 Comments
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Wilde Event | Niagara University

Wilde on the Borders: Symposium, Theatre, and Art
April 2, 2016, Niagara University, N.Y.

Located just four miles north of Niagara Falls, N.Y., along the U.S./Canadian border, Niagara University announces “Wilde on the Borders”, a day of lively academic discussions hosted by the English department which celebrates Wilde’s complexity through the forms he expressed: essays, theatre and art.

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Article

Guido Ferranti

Oscar Wilde Blog5 Comments
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A rediscovered letter by Oscar Wilde informs his relationship with anonymity

Wilde’s college exploits, his aesthetic entry into London society, the self-publicity of his American tour, and his pursuit of fame have all been well documented; and the story often distills to the crucial moment of his fall from grace, a short period in 1895 when fame turned to infamy.

But there is a more enduring, more subtle, and underlying theme that began with Wilde’s desire for the opposite: a journey through his art and life towards an imperative for anonymity.

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Article · Review

RBS

Oscar Wilde Blog4 Comments
800px-Uncorking-Old-Sherry-Gillray

When it comes to measuring time, sixty is an oddly benign number. It moves the seconds into minutes and the minutes into hours quite stealthily. But when the number is used to mark the passage of years—three score can give one quite a jolt. So when the occasion crept up on me last week, I was in need of rejuvenation.

An outing to the theatre would be the tonic I thought. But with the next Wilde play not until later in the month, I would need to find another balm for my (increasingly) furrowed brow.

What then if not Oscar? Perhaps something pre-Oscar…

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