The Picture of Dorian Gray: an introduction Buy and read urgently: Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, introduction and notes by John M.L. Drew, Wordsworth Classics, 2001 Go and look at Moodle: >> a bibliography and other resources are available there NB: for this class: a final written exam, ‘tirage au sort’ with US Lit, 3hours, probably a text commentary. For those who need to retake the exam in June: orals. More about MCC later. NB: PPP Tuesdays 3 to 5 pm: Jan 19th: all L2 students, then Feb 23rd: half the groups / March 1st: other half: workshops; presentations/assessment: March 22nd, March 29th, and April 5th

OSCAR FINGAL O’FLAHERTIE WILLS WILDE: a celebrity, a critic, and a writer (poems, short stories, essays and reviews, public lectures, a novel, and plays), fashionable before he had really published anything much, famous for his public persona as an unconventional, provocative man (dress and ideas), a dandy, an aesthete and a wit. Born: Dublin 1854; educated at Trinity college, then Oxford, then moved to London in 1878, married Constance Lloyd in 1884 (two children: Vyvyan and Cyril Holland) 1882: Series of conferences on aestheticism in the US, then Paris, then England >> until 1895: rise to literary success (articles, stories, essays, plays) 1895: disastrous lawsuit against his lover’s father >> trial for gross indecency >> two years in jail, then exile in Italy and France where he died in December Read John M L Drew’s introduction to your edition of the novel (wordsworth classics)

Rossetti's Name is heard in America, Max Beerbohm, 1922

James Edward Kelly James Edward Kelly, undated

Wilde, Lord Alfred Douglas (‘Bosie’), the Marquess of Queensberry, Constance Wilde

BIBLIOGRAPHY: (on Moodle) Please buy: Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, introduction and notes by John M.L. Drew, Wordsworth Classics, Other useful editions: O. Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, an annotated uncensured edition, edited by Nicholas Frankel, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press (Harvard University Press), O. Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, edited by Michael Patrick Gillespie, Norton Critical Edition, 2nd ed, 2007.

About Wilde or about The Picture of Dorian Gray: Richard Ellmann, Oscar Wilde, Penguin, The Cambridge Companion to Oscar Wilde, edited by Peter Raby, CUP, Michael Patrick Gillespie, The Picture of Dorian Gray: 'What the World Thinks Me', Twayne's Masterwork Studies n°145, twayne Publishers, Ruth Robbins, Oscar Wilde, Continuum, Neil Sammells, Wilde Style, The Plays and Prose of Oscar Wilde, Pearson Education, John Sloan, Oscar Wilde, Authors in Context, Oxford World’s Classics, OUP, Giles Whiteley, Oscar Wilde and the Simulacrum, The Truth of Masks, Studies in Comparative Literature 35, Modern Humanities Research Association and Maney Publishing, M.H. Abrams, Geoffrey Galt Harpham, A Glossary of Literary Terms, 10th ed, international edition, Wadsworth, 2012.

THE TEXT: The Picture of Dorian Gray: first published in 1890 in Lippincott’s magazine (around 500 words excised from original typescript plus other edits by J. M. Stoddard) Revised 1891 Ward, Lock and Company book version: >> this is also the text in your edition (Wordsworth Classics) >> revised to respond to critics and at the insistence of the publisher (toning down of homoerotic content) >> preface + extra chapters: 3, 5, 15 to 18 (mostly: James Vane’s revenge attempts ) + chapter 19 expanded and turned into 2 chapters, see bottom p xi- xiii 2011: first publication of uncensored original typescript (with handwritten emendations by Wilde himself): Frankel, Nicholas, ed. The Picture of Dorian Gray: An Annotated, Uncensored Edition. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press (Harvard University Press), 2011.

RECEPTION: 1890: very harshly criticized in the British press Quotes: see intro to your ed p ix ff + listen to Frankel p 5 ff Context: Cleveland Street affair ( : police raid on a brothel staffed by young Post Office workers, a member of the royal family is involved but escapes prosecution) criminal law amendment act 1885 making homosexual acts between men illegal (even between consenting adults in private): ‘gross indecency’ see your intro p xi

WILDE’S RESPONSE? many letters to magazines and newspapers when novel published in book form: preface: an answer to the attacks in the form of a series of epigrams (an epigram = 1: a concise poem dealing pointedly and often satirically with a single thought or event and often ending with an ingenious turn of thought 2: a terse, sage, or witty and often paradoxical saying 3: epigrammatic expression) Letters to editors Norton critical ed p 361 : ‘Besides, I must admit that, either from temperament or from taste, or from both, I am quite incapable of understanding how any work of art can be criticized from a moral standpoint. The sphere of art and the sphere of ethics are absolutely distinct and separate.’ (to the editor of the St James’ Gazette, 25 June 1890) But also: self-censorship: 1891 version : included changes, as noted earlier

A PIECE OF EVIDENCE AGAINST WILDE AT HIS TRIAL IN 1895 Wilde prosecuted the Marquess of Queensberry for criminal libel but ended up prosecuted, convicted, and imprisoned (two years of solitary confinement with hard labour) for the new crime of ‘gross indecency’ DG used by Edward Carson, Q’s lawyer, as a defense arguing that W was indeed ‘posing as a sodomite’ in his writings at least (cf ‘posing somdomite’) Wilde’s answers to Carson’s cross examination >> the trial turned into a debate on art and morality as well as dealing with accusations of perverting Douglas Wilde reported to have remarked about about DG: it ‘contains much of me in it. Basil Hallward is what I think I am: Lord Henry what the world thinks me: Dorian what I would like to be, in other ages, perhaps.’ (Frankel p 14) So Carson’s use of DG, possibly not that bad an idea. Frankel p 14: ‘Wilde was conscious that the novel reflected the multiple strands of his personality and sexual life. As importantly, he was acutely aware that, like himself, The Picture of Dorian Gray stood at odds with an age of heightened intolerance and repression when it came to sexual matters.’ But during Wilde’s subsequent trial, all this: rather irrelevant as other types of witnesses were called.

SO, AN IMMORAL TEXT? WHAT DO YOU THINK? Next: a few words about the ‘Fin de Siècle’ literary/cultural context, aesthetes and decadents, and possibly a quick look at the preface: have a look at the resources on Moodle, esp. sections 1 and 2 Then: text commentary: beginning of chapter 1, >> ‘ … suffer terribly.’