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WHEN CRITICS DISAGREE: RECENT APPROACHES TO OSCAR WILDE
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 August 2002
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REVIEWINGTHE SCHOLARSHIP on Wilde in the last decade is a daunting task not only because of the large amount of recent work on Wilde, but because the ground is already occupied by two book-length surveys: Ian Small’s Oscar Wilde: Recent Research (which picks up where his 1993 Oscar Wilde Revalued left off) and Melissa Knox’s Oscar Wilde in the 1990s: The Critic as Creator. The reader, then, is referred to these volumes for their more comprehensive coverage. Here I will focus my discussion by borrowing what Small designates three “new paradigms” that emerged in the 1990s: the Gay Wilde, the Irish Wilde, Wilde and Consumerism — this last I will rename the Materialist Wilde. To these I will add a fourth category, again taking my cue from Small: Idealist Wilde. In each category I will use representative examples to reflect on the issues confronting these approaches to Wilde. Both Small and Knox evaluate as well as chronicle, though from different perspectives. Small believes work in the field should be better supported by empirical information — “facts” — about Wilde’s life, his career, and the period, and he thinks scholars need to consider whether the different “Wildes” they construct are compatible with each other (12–13). Knox favors a biographical approach to Wilde, saying explicitly that her survey “explores the forms of resistance to biography as well as its successful use in criticism of the l990s” (xv), and turning up more instances of resistance than success.1
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- © 2002 Cambridge University Press
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