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BOOK REVIEWS contends unexpectedly: "And yet what is also vividly obvious about Dorian Gray is how much it does not resemble the Ouidean model." Despite the shift in judgment, Schaffer depicts the oddities of Ouida, in life and art, with sprightliness. In "Oscar Wilde and Jesus Christ," Stephen Arata begins his essay with a discussion of Byron, who is Wilde's "ancestor." Nevertheless, Wilde links himself and Byron to Christ as figures dominated by "passion " in "both the literary and the theological contexts. . . ." However, Wilde's Christ "differs in important ways from the Christ oÃ- fin-de-siècle [French] Decadence" (Arata does not distinguish "Decadence" capitalized from "decadence" in lower case). Arata discusses at length the influence on Wilde of Ernest Renan's Vie de Jésus (1863), which regards Christ "independently of the writings about him." When all is said, writes Arata, "Jesus is in Wilde's conception no longer a person at all (and not a God, either:...) but an art-work, a self-created one at that." In "Oscar Wilde's Legacies to Clarion and New Age Socialist Aestheticism ," Ann Ardis scrutinizes the debates between two Socialist journals on such subjects as literature, politics, and the arts. The New Age published the writings of such figures as Shaw, Wells, Beatrice and Sidney Webb; the Clarion published Rebecca West's early work. Ardis devotes much space to the editor of the Clarion, Robert Blatchford, who published his own serialized fiction. Wilde's "legacy," "The Soul of Man under Socialism," is little discussed. The final essay, Xiaoyi Zhous's "Salomé in China," is initially an interesting historical account of Wilde's extraordinary reputation, his translations, and theatrical productions going back to the 1920s; however , there is little discussion of Salomé as a symbolist play except for Salome's "wild act of kissing the severed head," a sensation in 1929. Xiaoyi Zhous devotes much space to the latest fashion by some critics who combine consumerism and aestheticism. KARL BECKSON __________________ Brooklyn College, CUNY New Dowson Biography Jad Adams. Madder Music and Stronger Wine: The Life of Ernest Dowson , Poet and Decadent. New York: I B Tauris, 2002. χ + 232 pp. Paper $17.95 PUBLISHED near the centenary of Ernest Dowson's death, Madder Music, Stronger Wine is the first book-length biography to appear on Dowson in nearly fifty years. As its title suggests, Jad Adams's 107 ELT 47 : 1 2004 study concentrates mainly upon Ernest Dowson as "the archetypal Decadent poet." It celebrates the poet's life and work in the context of late-Victorian current events, fashions, and social mores, providing fascinating insights into the bohemian circles of fîn-de-siècle London and Paris and the colorful characters who animated them. Adams attributes Dowson's tragic and, ultimately, self-destructive temperament to his family's legacy of disease, suicide, and bankruptcy; his iconoclastic and promiscuous lifestyle; and his heavy doses of classical scholarship and devotion to the Catholic Church. So, while he aims to see Dowson as a "a supporter of Oscar Wilde when almost all turned against him," "a brilliant craftsman of English verse," "a dedicated and hard working writer," and a man who "worked even when racked with the disease which was to kill him at such an early age," Adams admits that much can be said against Dowson's "drunkenness, tendency to get into brawls, his bizarre attachment to little girls, and his consistent failure to be decisive ." Indeed, much of the book does speak against Dowson's neuroses, sensational delights, and erratic behavior. When Madder Music and Stronger Wine opens with claims that Dowson was "cursed from birth" and that his "life was a human sacrifice," the narrative risks falling back on the legends that have overshadowed Dowson's work for more than one hundred years, since the construction of Dowson as a "the ultimate poet" who lived a life of "pyrotechnic suffering " is one of the key themes developed in this book. But Adams then successfully resists the legendary image of Dowson as simply sordid, miserable, and unkempt in favor of a more sympathetic revision: "If the image of a poet sitting in a bar scribbling deathless verse on the...

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