Wilde Crimes: The Art of Murder and Decadent (Homo)Sexuality in Gyles Brandreth's Oscar Wilde Series

2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 165-182
Author(s):  
Susanne Gruss
Keyword(s):  
Oscar Wilde ◽  
Reading Public ◽  
Sherlock Holmes ◽  
The Real ◽  
Victorian Fiction ◽  
Historical Detail

Gyles Brandreth's Oscar Wilde novels (2007–12) appropriate Wilde for a neo-Victorian crime series in which the sharp-witted aestheticist serves as a detective à la Sherlock Holmes. This article explores Brandreth's art of adapting Wilde (both the man and the works) and English decadent culture on several levels. The novels can, of course, be read as traditional crime mysteries: while readers follow Wilde as detective, they are simultaneously prompted to decipher the ‘truth’ of biographical and cultural/historical detail. At the same time, the mysteries revolve around Wilde's scandalous (homo)sexuality and thus his masculinity. The novels remain curiously cautious when it comes to the depiction of Wilde as homosexual: all novels showcase Wilde's marriage, Constance's virtues, and Oscar's love for his children, and the real ‘Somdomites’ are the murderers he pursues. By portraying these criminals and their crimes, the novels evade the less comfortable, transgressive aspects of Wilde's sexuality and help to reduce him to a thoroughly amusing decadent suitable for a general reading public. Brandreth's novels can therefore be read as a decidedly conservative account of Wilde's masculinity for the market of neo-Victorian fiction.

scholarly journals Die Daniëlboek se twee Sitze im Leben

2002 ◽  
Vol 58 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Nel ◽  
D.J. Human
Keyword(s):  
Second Century ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
The Real ◽  
Book Of Daniel ◽  
Historical Detail

The two contexts of the book of DanielDie Book of Daniel presupposes an exilic date of origin in the sixth century. The real context in which the book originated is the second century BC, during the persecution by Antiochus IV Epiphanes of Jewish fanatics opposing his hellenization policy. In order to fully understand the book, it is necessary to take into account the historical detail of both contexts.

The Brazilian Novel: Some Paradoxes of Popularity

1972 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 183-200
Author(s):  
Jon S. Vincent
Keyword(s):  
Popular Literature ◽  
Reading Public ◽  
Large Area ◽  
Folk Culture ◽  
The Real ◽  
Commercial Success ◽  
Literary Context

“Popular literature” is a term that appears in serious literary context most often as a means of disparaging the unremitting yokelism of the larger reading public and the cynical but uninspired writers who prey on the pocketbooks of yokeldom. The term may also appear in contexts in which its meaning is altogether different, as in the sober studies carried out by anthropologists and folklorists in which the literary manifestations of folk culture are studied. In the latter instance, the term loses its burden of vague antagonism and assumes a scholarly respectability based on the tested relevance and importance of primitive, preliterate, or peasant societies. In literate societies such as ours, the large area between this popular literature and the real literature of the truly cultured minority is dealt with gingerly, if at all. It is tacitly taken to represent the same kind of mindless consumerism that makes such an innovation as the electric canopener an overnight commercial success.

Virtual and Ideal Readers of Browning's “Pan and Luna”: the Drama in the Dramatic Idyl

1987 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
pp. 151-160 ◽  
Author(s):  
Betty S. Flowers
Keyword(s):  
Point Of View ◽  
Reading Public ◽  
Internal Auditor ◽  
The Real ◽  
The Ideal

Most of “Pan and Luna” is addressed not to an internal auditor but to what Gerald Prince calls the “virtual reader,” the reader the author imagines himself or herself to be writing to – in the case of “Pan and Luna,” the Victorian reading public. Prince observes:Every author, provided he is writing for someone other than himself, develops his narrative as a function of a certain type of reader whom he bestows with certain qualities, faculties, and inclinations according to his opinion of men in general (or in particular) and according to the obligations he feels should be respected. This virtual reader is different from the real reader: writers frequently have a public they don't deserve. (9)In addition to the distinction between the virtual reader and the real reader, Prince makes a further distinction between the real reader and the ideal reader. From the writer's point of view, “an ideal reader would be one who would understand perfectly and would approve entirely the least of his words, the most subtle of his intentions” (9).

Joseph Bell, M.D. — The Real Sherlock Holmes

1958 ◽  
Vol 258 (23) ◽  
pp. 1158-1159 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward E. Harnagel
Keyword(s):  
Sherlock Holmes ◽  
The Real

scholarly journals Centaurs, Pegasus, Sherlock Holmes: Against the Prejudice in Favour of the Real

2016 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 56-72
Author(s):  
Cristina Travanini
Keyword(s):  
Analytic Philosophy ◽  
Formal Ontology ◽  
Sherlock Holmes ◽  
Object Theory ◽  
The Real ◽  
Fictional Objects ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Fictional Object

Abstract Meinong’s thought has been rediscovered in recent times by analytic philosophy: his object theory has significant consequences in formal ontology, and especially his account of impossible objects has proved itself to be decisive in a wide range of fields, from logic up to ontology of fiction. Rejecting the traditional ‘prejudice in favour of the real’, Meinong investigates what there is not: a peculiar non-existing object is precisely the fictional object, which exemplifies a number of properties (like Sherlock Holmes, who lives in Baker Street and is an outstanding detective) without existing in the same way as flesh-and-blood detectives do. Fictional objects are in some sense incomplete objects, whose core of constituent properties is not completely determined. Now, what does it imply to hold that a fictional object may also occur in true statements? We shall deal with the objections raised by Russell and Quine against Meinong’s view, pointing out limits and advantages of both perspectives.

Oscar Wilde and A Wife's Tragedy: Facts and Conjectures

1983 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 83-95
Author(s):  
Rodney Shewan
Keyword(s):  
Oscar Wilde ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Literary Imagination ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Real ◽  
Ordinary Life ◽  
The One ◽  
Double Cross

Whenever a new fragment by Wilde appears, it inevitably raises hope that the often vulgarized but still fascinating relationship between the life and the work will somehow be clarified. Did the one really get all the genius, the other merely the talent, as he told Gide? Were the two always so disparate, so irreconcilable, as he insisted? Did work always seems, as he once said it seemed, ‘not a reality but a way of getting rid of reality’? If so, was this why ‘the real life is the life we do not lead’, the life of the literary imagination? Or was it that the ‘real life’ and ordinary life alternately promised Wilde those intense experiences his imagination craved, then took it in turns to double-cross him?

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document