Tag: patience

Article

I Can Wait (Revisited)

Oscar Wilde Blog4 Comments
Lotos Club New York.jpg
Oscar Wilde’s After-Dinner Rebuke to his Press Critics

It is pleasing to see that recent Wilde studies continue to highlight the emergent nature of Oscar’s American experience, during which time he nurtured the art of public speaking, conducted his first press interviews, staged his first play, had his iconic photographs taken, and stockpiled—to use an American word—material for his future epigrams and works.

But there is a crucial American beginning for Oscar that has been under-appreciated: I refer to his first brush with literary society. It occurred during an event at 149 Fifth Avenue in New York City, the then home of an organisation of journalists known as the Lotos Club.

Continue reading “I Can Wait (Revisited)” →
Review

Making (Up) Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde Blog7 Comments

“Making Oscar Wilde” by Michèle Mendelssohn
Oxford University Press (2018)

—Reviewed by: John Cooper—

As its title suggests, Making Oscar Wilde is an attempt to establish a premise for the shaping of Oscar Wilde’s persona—the latest in a history of such perspectives which has included disquisitions of his Irish roots, his American experience, his men, his women, his friends, his enemies, his wit, his letters, his published works, his unpublished works, his recorded life, his unrecorded life, and, for good measure, his legacy after life.

Now Michèle Mendelssohn takes a potentially useful and probably unique view through the prism of Wilde’s racial profile. On surface reading the work has much to commend it—but to discover whether it works as a construction we will have to disassemble it.

Continue reading “Making (Up) Oscar Wilde” →
Article

Quixote of the Queer

Oscar Wilde Blog3 Comments
Textual Analysis for Students

A verse parody appeared just three weeks after Oscar Wilde arrived in America. It was one many such newspaper items in 1882 that poked fun at Wilde and the aesthetic movement.

It was notable for its affected and satirical overuse of alliteration. Although Wilde was known for his occasional penchant for this verbal prose style (something that Whistler later parodied), it was probably not recognized by the author of this verse when it was written in January 1882.

It is more likely that its use was prompted by expressions such as “too-too” and “utterly utter” that were connected to the also alliterative Apostle of the Aesthetes.

As such, the text is instructional in understanding allusions to Wilde and the aesthetic movement. Let us examine the terminology:

Continue reading “Quixote of the Queer” →
Article

Conspicuous (Even By His Absence)

Oscar Wilde Blog10 Comments

Oscar Wilde could be found everywhere in 1882

The phenomenon of Wilde’s US ubiquitous presence in 1882 has been well-documented, most recently in David Friedman’s Wilde in America (2014) which portrays Wilde as being so intent upon fame that he had a strategy for achieving it.

Wilde’s image used to promote the “Bosom Beautifier”.

Whatever Wilde’s personal strategy was, however, his effort was compounded by other factors, including his own lecture tour, the popularity of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Patience and its burlesques, and a general curiosity of the people to see him. As a result, one might wonder whether it is possible to be too well known.

Take the world of advertising.

Continue reading “Conspicuous (Even By His Absence)” →
Article

“Oscar” the Opera: The Art Of Darkness

Oscar Wilde Blog3 Comments

Oscar, the opera in Philadelphia

The first time Oscar Wilde visited Philadelphia it was to promote an opera. That was during his lecture tour of America in 1882 when a required part of his visit was to act as the poster-boy for Gilbert & Sullivan’s latest comic opera Patience.

The purpose of Patience was to ridicule the adherents of the Aesthetic Movement. Not that it mattered to Oscar Wilde that he was the movement’s leading representative and the person most closely identified with the ridicule. He always knew he would outlive the mob mentality. It is an ironic measure of the wisdom of Wilde’s indifference that he has now triumphantly returned to Philadelphia as the subject of an opera himself.

The question is: if Oscar was indifferent to the opera Patience, would he have had any patience for Oscar the opera?

Continue reading ““Oscar” the Opera: The Art Of Darkness” →