A Map of the World That Does Not Include Utopia: Wilde’s

Portrayal of Englishness Through Otherness

Nadav Lifschits 29/5/2016

Oscar Wilde’s work is known as almost too closely resembling English Society. I aim to

show how Wilde’s relationship to different cultures influenced him and allowed him to portray

the English way of life. I argue that his successful construction of the English character is due

partly to the way in which he presents other cultures. This is to be proven by examining the

manner in which he creates characters from other backgrounds and how they, along with ideas

from these different nations, interact or are interacted with the English characters. By pinning

Wilde’s use of non-Englishness, I intend to characterize that very trait. Through focusing on

interactions between English and non-English across genres, a clearer picture will be produced of

Wilde’s intended or accidental use of defamiliarization.

1. Pochmara, Anna. Between Elysium and Inferno: The Rhetoric of Ambivalence in Oscar

Wilde's and Rudyard Kipling's Writings about America. Journal of Transatlantic Studies

13.1 (2015): 56-75. Web.

Pochmara relates the way in which two English writers, Oscar Wilde and Rudyard

Kipling, discuss the USA. The two writers come from a similar background and both tour the

country, thereby allowing a comparison to be made between their views. She argues that the way

these prominent English writers see the USA is through the lens of Occidentalism, Orientalism,

and the mythology of the frontier. This situates the English identity as more fragile than

imagined, the two writers predicting the American experience as a colonial effort of education.
Pochmara positions the writers’ views of the budding country against the waning empire as an

uncertain one.

2. Novak, Daniel A. Performing the “Wilde West”: Victorian Afterlives, Sexual

Performance, and the American West. Victorian Studies 54.3 (2012): 451-63. Web.

Novak discusses the significance of several American responses to Wilde’s visit to the

country, among them a satirical poem and a comic play. They deal with Wilde’s alignment with

the American West and the comparison between the cowboy and the dandy. On one hand, they

contrast the heterosexual masculine nature of the cowboy and the effeminacy of the aesthete. On

the other hand, they compare the importance of posing in order to assert social masculinity. The

focus on Wilde’s sexuality and his homosociality is shown as comparable to the American

West’s masculine ideal and therefore brings into discussion the American and English societal

expectations.

3. Killeen, Jarlath. The Greening of Oscar Wilde: Situating Ireland in the Wilde Wars. Irish

Studies Review 23.4 (2015): 424-50. Web.

Killeen comments on the way in which Oscar Wilde is viewed as an Irish or English writer.

He locates the ways in which Wilde’s Irish identity as a writer is subject to criticism and acclaim

as the research of Irish literature becomes more involved with either a focus on political

extratextual or with colonial readings of Wilde’s works. He deals with allegorical approaches to

Wilde and their critiques, serving as a kind of meta-analysis. He comments on the problematic

nature of what he calls the “Wilde wars”, where because Wilde’s “popularity with an

undergraduate readership”, there is a plurality of identities for the writer at odds with each other.

The issue with this, he says, is that critics accuse each other of things such as “syphilitic
infection” and don’t cooperate to create a diverse discourse. Killeen notes Wilde’s comments, or

lack thereof, on Irish nationalistic issues in the public eye, at times avoiding and at other points

defending the Irish interests.

4. Jones, Justin T. Morality's Ugly Implications in Oscar Wilde's Fairy Tales. SEL Studies

in English Literature 1500-1900 51.4 (2011): 883-903. Web.

Jones focuses on the issue of beauty in three of Wilde’s fairy tales. He compares Wilde’s

fairy tales to others in the genre, specifically to the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian

Andersen. The way Jones portrays these issues is in contrast to the Victorian ideals of the

times, presenting Wilde as an artist in dialogue with them. The relationship between morality

and art are emphasized. However, my interest lies with the comparisons Jones makes

between Wilde and other works, such as Andersen’s “The Nightingale” and Grimm’s

“Hansel and Gretel”. This places Wilde within a European geography and allows him to

construct, if not an English, a Wildean fairy tale complete with values produced and situated

in contrast to existing norms.