Thesis Submitted For the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Oscar Wilde and East Asia: Empire, Nation-State, and the Globalisation of Aestheticism Qi Chen Department of English Royal Holloway, University of London 2011 - 1 - Declaration This thesis is all my own work. I acknowledge the University of London regulations on plagiarism and confirm that all sources used to support my research are made explicit in references. Qi Chen Signed: Date: - 2 - Abstract This thesis provides a new insight into the cosmopolitanism of Oscar Wilde, enlarging understanding of Wilde in a broader than national context. It illustrates how the interaction between the British Empire and the Far East contributed to Wilde’s aestheticism and literary career, and how his writings were translated, comprehended and transformed in the Far East. The first part, ‘East Asia of Oscar Wilde: The Aesthetic Movement in the Empire’ , explores the multi-relationships of the aesthetic movement, the British Empire, and the global circulation of Oriental (Chinese and Japanese) commodities/immigrants/ideas, arguing Wilde’s writings were cultural products of globalisation. The aesthetic movement was part of the Victorian mass culture, and closely tied to the expansion of the British Empire in the Far East in the late nineteenth century. It perceives Wilde’s aestheticism and his participation in the British aesthetic movement as economies and politics within global commerce following the Industrial Revolution, at a time when there were accelerated movements of peoples and ideas across national borders within the British Empire. The second part, ‘Oscar Wilde in East Asia: Aestheticism and National Modernisation’ examines the reception, comprehension and adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s writings in the turbulent socio-cultural context of modern Japan and China during the early twentieth century. It analyses the literary, cultural and social impacts of Wilde on the modernisation of Japanese and Chinese cultural identities, investigating reader response to Wilde’s writings in East Asia associated with the self-narration of emerging nation-states. It concludes with ‘Oscar Wilde’s Aestheticism and the Global Circulation of Modernity’, summarising the research on Wilde, aestheticism, and the aesthetic movement against the historical background of globalisation and modernisation. - 3 - Contents Acknowledgements 6 List of Illustrations 7 Introduction: Oscar Wilde in a Transnational Context 8 Part One: East Asia of Oscar Wilde: The Aesthetic Movement in the Empire 19 Preface 19 Chapter One: Oscar Wilde’s China 25 1. Aristocracy for the Common People: Chinese Commodity in Oscar Wilde’s Aestheticism 25 i Oscar Wilde’s Consumption of China: Porcelain, Tea and Textiles 30 ii Dorian Gray’s Consumption of China: Consumerism, Fetishism and Decadence 40 2. Mirror of Self-Consciousness: The ‘Chinaman’ in Oscar Wilde’s Identity Politics 52 Chapter Two: Oscar Wilde’s Japan 75 1. The Victorian Experience of Japan: Japonisme in Oscar Wilde’s Aestheticism75 i Japonisme and ‘Art for Art’s Sake’ 81 ii Japan as Aesthetic Utopia 94 2. Marketing Utopia: Commodification of Japan in the Aesthetic Movement 106 Chapter Three: Oscar Wilde’s Interpretation of Zhuangzi 122 i Wilde’s Review of Chuang Tsu 123 ii The Echoes of Zhuangzi in Wilde’s Writings 134 Summary: Orientalism in the Aesthetic Movement of the British Empire 146 Part Two: Oscar Wilde in East Asia: Aestheticism and National Modernisation 153 Preface 153 Chapter Four: Oscar Wilde in Japan 164 1. The Reception of Wilde in Japan: Introduction, Translation, Criticism and - 4 - Adaptation 164 i Timeline of Japanese Translations of Wilde’s Works 166 ii Translation, Criticism and Adaptation of Wilde: ‘The Soul of Man under Socialism’, Poems and Prose, Fairy Tales, Stories, De Profundis , Epigrams, Essays, and the Japanese Edition of Complete Works of Wilde 170 iii Monographs on Wilde and British Aestheticism in Japan 193 2. Translating and Performing Wilde’s Plays in Japan 202 i Translation and Production of Salome in Japan 204 ii The Society Comedies and Other Plays 216 Chapter Five: Oscar Wilde in China 220 1. Wilde’s Fairy Tales and Other Non-Dramatic Works in China 220 i Wilde’s Fairy Tales and the Development of Chinese Children’s Literature 223 ii Poems and Prose, Dorian Gray and Other Stories, Essays, and De Profundis 235 iii Monographs on Wilde and British Aestheticism in China 241 2. Wilde’s Society Plays and Chinese Modern Drama 247 i Lady Windermere’s Fan 252 ii Other Society Plays 264 3. Salome in China and Its Social Interpretation: Women’s Liberation 269 i Translation and Performance of Salome in China 269 ii Chinese Criticism, Imitations and Transformation of Salome 279 Summary: Occidentalism in the Reception of British Aestheticism in East Asia287 Conclusion: Oscar Wilde’s Aestheticism and the Global Circulation of Modernity 292 Glossary 300 Bibliography 310 - 5 - Acknowledgements First and foremost, I own sincere and earnest thankfulness to my supervisor Dr Anne Varty for her invaluable guidance during the past four years. This thesis would not have been possible without her help, support and patience. I am also very grateful for the sincere help from Professor Ewan Fernie when he was the director of postgraduate students (research) at Royal Holloway. My special thanks go to my parents in China, who always fully support my dreams. - 6 - List of Illustrations Fig. 1 ‘John Chinaman’, Punch 10 February 1877 Fig. 2 ‘The Aesthetic Monkey’, Harper’s Weekly 28 January 1882 Fig. 3 La Princesse du Pay de la Porcelaine Fig. 4 Night View of Kanazawa under the Full Moon by Hiroshige, 1857 Fig. 5 Nocturne in Blue and Silver – Chelsea by Whistler, 1871 Fig. 6 Harmony in Blue and Gold: The Peacock Room by Whistler, 1876-1877 Fig. 7 Purple and Rose: The Lange Lijzen of the Six Marks Fig. 8 ‘The Japanese School at the Royal Academy’ Fig. 9 ‘Funny Jap’, Punch , 27 February 1886 Fig. 10 Japanese Actresses of Salome Fig. 11 The picture of Wilde on the cover page of the magazine New Youth (1:3) Fig. 12 Lady Windermere’s Fan directed by Hong Shen, Shanghai 1924 Fig.13 A film poster for Chinese Lady Windermere’s Fan Fig.14 The cover of Salome issued by Zhonghua Press 1923 Fig.15 ‘Salome embracing the Head of John the Baptist’, Good Friends 1929 Fig.16 ‘Miss Yu Shan performing Salome’, Good Friends 1926 - 7 - Introduction: Oscar Wilde in a Transnational Context Born in Dublin as a son of notable Anglo-Irish parents on 16 October 1854, Oscar Wilde received an elite English education at the University of Oxford, travelled to the Continent with J. P. Mahaffy in his youth, became famous through his lecture tour in the American New World, acquired a successful literary career in London, and suffered public disgrace in the same metropolis, exiled himself from England to the Continent after two years’ hard labour in prison, and finally died in the Hotel d’ Alsace in Paris on 30 November 1900. He has been widely recognised as a cosmopolitan writer, in whose writings multinational cultural elements can be traced. For example, Wilde was greatly indebted to French culture. His aestheticism not only showed a line of British poets going back through the Pre-Raphaelites to John Keats, but also sought inspiration from a group of French aesthetes such as Gautier, Baudelaire and Flaubert. As Richard Hibbitt points out, ‘Wilde’s own Francophilia and his knowledge of French literature are well known, as are the specific French influences on his own work’ (66). Emily Eells argues that ‘the dynamics of intertextual exchange at work both in the creation of his oeuvre and its early reception in France engaged him in a process of naturalisation as a French man of letters’ (80). Julia Prewitt Brown’s monograph Cosmopolitan Criticism: Oscar Wilde’s Philosophy of Art presents Wilde’s position in the intellectual context of the German Romantics, the French Symbolists, and his own Victorian contemporaries, to depict Wilde’s artistic cosmopolitanism against the background of European aesthetic tradition. Meanwhile, Wilde has an international readership. His works have been translated, published, distributed, read, reviewed, emulated and transformed in Europe, North America, the Far East, and other places of the world. - 8 - Wilde was a Victorian, but he has also been argued to be one of the nineteenth-century writers who were ‘modern’. As Peter Dickinson lists, the proliferation of Wilde’s posthumous personae embodies various ‘modern’ issues of the twentieth century; he could be read as a literary modernist, a sexual liberationist, an Irish nationalist, an anarchist, a socialist, an individualist, a feminist, an iconoclast, and a pop star (431). Wilde’s name is usually associated with the British aesthetic movement, which occurred during the late nineteenth century. The movement began to emerge around mid-century in John Ruskin’s criticism of the visual arts. It flourished in the 1870s and 1880s, and led to the fin-de-siècle decadence. The aesthetic circle included the Pre-Raphaelites, Walter Pater, Wilde, A. C. Swinburne, William Morris, James McNeill Whistler, Christopher Dresser, E. W. Godwin, Ernest Dowson, Arthur Symons and Aubrey Beardsley, among others. This thesis recognises the broad intellectual traditions of Wilde’s aestheticism and writings: the conceptual heritage of the Continental aesthetics, English Romanticism, late-Victorian liberalism and humanism, the Arts and Crafts movement, the Celtic Revival, and so on. Nonetheless, it intends to explore the significant yet so far relatively ignored influences of East Asia on Wilde’s literary career against the background of the British Empire’s expansion in the Far East in the late nineteenth century. Moreover, the thesis attempts to broaden the reception of Wilde in the Oriental context, examining the literary, political, social and cultural impacts of Wilde on Japan and China in transition, in other words, to explore how his writings participated in the narration of modernisation of the representative East Asian nation-states in the early twentieth century.