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Open Research Online The Open University’s repository of research publications and other research outputs Looking with Narcissus: Oscar Wilde’s Reception of the Dying God Thesis How to cite: Manny, Iarfhlaith (2018). Looking with Narcissus: Oscar Wilde’s Reception of the Dying God. PhD thesis The Open University. For guidance on citations see FAQs. c 2017 The Author Version: Version of Record Copyright and Moral Rights for the articles on this site are retained by the individual authors and/or other copyright owners. For more information on Open Research Online’s data policy on reuse of materials please consult the policies page. oro.open.ac.uk Iarfhlaith Manny, BA (Hons) (Dub. et Oxon.), MPhil (Oxon.) Looking with Narcissus: Oscar Wilde’s Reception of the Dying God Doctor of Philosophy, Classical Studies The Open University/St Hilda’s College, University of Oxford March 2017 Abstract ‘It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors,’ writes Oscar Wilde in his ‘Preface’ to the 1891 book edition of his novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray. By transferring agency away from the originator to the recipient, Wilde’s aphorism could be considered a late nineteenth-century version of reception theory, which has sought to challenge conventional critical ideas of influence or tradition in classical studies in recent decades. The Introduction to this thesis relates the classically educated Wilde’s epigram, which supposedly originated with his Trinity College Dublin tutor, John Pentland Mahaffy, to the dissolution of authority both inside and outside Classics during the second half of the nineteenth century. Chapter 1 explores the broadly similar critical sentiments in Wilde’s press correspondence and his defence of his writings in his 1895 libel action against the Marquess of Queensberry. Wilde’s inverted ideas of reading, I argue, are informed by the plays of Euripides and Aristophanes. Chapters 2 and 3 turn Wilde’s inverted ideas of reading on their head. Chapter 2 argues that Wilde’s use of the Orpheus story in Ovid’s Metamorphoses is revealing about not only Dorian Gray’s but also his author’s troubled relations with both sexes. Chapter 3 shows how Wilde uses Aeschylus’ Agamemnon in his fairy tales and plays to represent unhappy heterosexual relations in contradistinction to a positively portrayed Platonic pedagogical pederasty—a juxtaposition that is reflected in Wilde’s life as well as his work. Chapter 4 reverts to Wilde’s idea that artistic meaning is in the eye of the beholder. The religious relativism and oscillation between literary sources in Wilde’s drama Salomé, which is viewed as an example of ‘Alexandrian’ Euripideanism, contribute to an atmosphere of narcissistic subjectivism and projectionism that meet with the full condemnation of official authority. For my mother GERALD You are my mother and my father all in one. I need no second parent. Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance ΑΘΗΝΑΙΑ μήτηρ γὰρ οὔτις ἐστὶν ἥ μ’ ἐγείνατο, […] κάρτα δ’ εἰμὶ τοῦ πατρός. Aeschylus, Eumenides The Student looked up from the grass, and listened, but he could not understand what the Nightingale was saying to him, for he only knew the things that are written down in books. Wilde, ‘The Nightingale and the Rose’ CECILY Dr Chasuble is a most learned man. He has never written a single book, so you can imagine how much he knows. The Importance of Being Earnest Acknowledgements ‘Swallow, Swallow, little Swallow,’ said the Prince, ‘far away across the city I see a young man in a garret. He is leaning over a desk covered with papers, and in a tumbler by his side there is a bunch of withered violets. His hair is brown and crisp, and his lips are red as a pomegranate, and he has large and dreamy eyes. He is trying to finish a play for the Director of the Theatre, but he is too cold to write any more. There is no fire in the grate, and hunger has made him faint.’ ‘I will wait with you one night longer,’ said the Swallow, who really had a good heart. ‘Shall I take him another ruby?’ ‘Alas! I have no ruby now,’ said the Prince; ‘my eyes are all that I have left. They are made of rare sapphires, which were brought out of India a thousand years ago. Pluck out one of them and take it to him. He will sell it to the jeweller, and buy food and firewood, and finish his play.’ Wilde, ‘The Happy Prince’ Friends who have kept me sane throughout this whole process are Faheema Ali, Judy Brown, Karen Caines, Kate Rowan, Johanna de Vos, Rachael White, and the members of St Hilda’s College Drama Society, who enabled me to fulfil my adolescent dream of treading the boards as Lady Bracknell. Peter Henshaw generously stepped in when my laptop was lost in France. My mother, Geraldine Manny, who believes in religion, and brought me up to believe in it also, has provided unwavering spiritual and material support for all my endeavours. My examiners, Prof. Lorna Hardwick, Dr Stefano Evangelista, and Prof. John Stokes—like the screenwriter Joe Gillis in Sunset Boulevard—helped me greatly to doctor my Salomé. A version of Chapter 2, entitled ‘Oscar as (Ovid as) Orpheus: Misogyny and Pederasty in Dorian Gray and the Metamorphoses’, was published in Oscar Wilde and Classical Antiquity, ed. Kathleen Riley, Alastair J. L. Blanshard, and Iarla Manny (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018). Those who kindly read and commented on drafts of this chapter are Fiona Macintosh, Kathleen Riley, Alastair Blanshard, Karen Caines, Fiachra Mac Góráin, and Cillian O’Hogan. This thesis was supported by a Michael Comber PhD Studentship in the Reception of the Classical World, funded by The Open University and the University of Oxford between 2012 and 2015. Table of Contents Abbreviations i Introduction 1 1. Oscar Agonistes: ‘MR OSCAR WILDE’S BAD CASE’ 57 2. ‘Some One Else’s Music’: Ovid’s Orpheus in The Picture of Dorian Gray 104 3. The Nightingale and the Swallow: Aeschylus’ Agamemnon and the Reception of Wilde 129 4. Eros Bound and Unbound: Euripidean Tragedy in Salomé 192 Conclusion: Afterwords 236 Bibliography 268 i Abbreviations AJPh American Journal of Philology APGRD Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama Aristophanes Y. T. O. [= Leopold Charles M. S. Amery, Francis W. Hirst, Henry A. A. Cruso], Aristophanes at Oxford: O. W. (Oxford: Vincent, [1894]). Browning Terence Rattigan, The Browning Version, in Plays: One: ‘French Without Tears’, ‘The Winslow Boy’, ‘The Browning Version’, ‘Harlequinade’, Methuen Drama World Classics (London: Methuen Drama, 1981). Complete Letters The Complete Letters of Oscar Wilde, ed. Merlin Holland and Rupert Hart-Davis (New York: Holt, 2000). CJ Classical Journal CQ Classical Quarterly Criticism The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde, iv: Criticism: ‘Historical Criticism’, ‘Intentions’, ‘The Soul of Man’, ed. Josephine M. Guy, OET (Oxford: OUP, 2007). Culture and Anarchy Matthew Arnold, ‘Culture and Anarchy’ and Other Writings, ed. Stefan Collini, Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought (Cambridge: CUP, 1993). CUP Cambridge University Press De Profundis The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde, ii: ‘De Profundis’: ‘Epistola: In Carcere et Vinculis’, ed. Ian Small, OET (Oxford: OUP, 2005). Dorian Gray The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde, iii: ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’: The 1890 and 1891 Texts, ed. Joseph Bristow, OET (Oxford: OUP, 2005). Earnest Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest, ed. Russell Jackson, NM (London: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2015). Fan Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere’s Fan, ed. Ian Small, NM (2nd edn, London: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 1999). The Happy Prince Oscar Wilde, The Happy Prince and Other Tales, in Short Stories. ii History Boys Alan Bennett, The History Boys (London: Faber and Faber, 2004). Husband Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband, ed. Russell Jackson, NM (London: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2013). Invention Tom Stoppard, The Invention of Love (London: Faber and Faber, 1997). Journalism, i The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde, vi: Journalism, i, ed. John Stokes and Mark W. Turner, OET (Oxford: OUP, 2013). Journalism, ii The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde, vii: Journalism, ii, ed. John Stokes and Mark W. Turner, OET (Oxford: OUP, 2013). ‘Lord Arthur’ Oscar Wilde, ‘Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime’, in Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime and Other Stories, in Short Stories. Marius Walter Pater, Marius the Epicurean: His Sensations and Ideas, ed. Ian Small, The World’s Classics (Oxford: OUP, 1986). Maurice E. M. Forster, Maurice, ed. P. N. Furbank, Penguin Classics (London: Penguin, 2005; first pub. Arnold, 1971). ‘Nightingale’ Oscar Wilde, ‘The Nightingale and the Rose’, in The Happy Prince, in Short Stories. NM New Mermaids OCD Oxford Classical Dictionary, ed. Simon Hornblower and Antony Spawforth (rev. 3rd edn, Oxford: OUP, 2003). OCT Oxford Classical Texts OED Oxford English Dictionary OET Oxford English Texts OUDS Oxford University Dramatic Society OUP Oxford University Press OWC Oxford World’s Classics OW&AG Iain Ross, Oscar Wilde and Ancient Greece, Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture (Cambridge: CUP, 2013). OW&CA Kathleen Riley, Alastair J. L. Blanshard, and Iarla Manny (eds), Oscar Wilde and Classical Antiquity (Oxford: OUP, 2018). iii Oxford Notebooks Oscar Wilde’s Oxford Notebooks: A Portrait of Mind in the Making, ed. Philip E. Smith II and Michael S. Helfand (Oxford: OUP, 1989). Patience W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan, Patience; or, Bunthorne’s Bride (London: International Music Publications, 2014). Plays The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde, v: Plays, i: ‘The Duchess of Padua’, ‘Salomé: drame en un acte’, ‘Salome: Tragedy in One Act’, ed. Joseph Donohue, OET (Oxford: OUP, 2013). Poems The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde, i: Poems and Poems in Prose, ed. Bobby Fong and Karl Beckson, OET (Oxford: OUP, 2000).