Wilde & Classical Antiquity

BECAUSE OF ITS NEW PERSPECTIVES and revealing contributions, this collection concerning Wilde's relation to classical culture warrants attention from scholars of Wilde or Classical Reception. Readers not trained, as Wilde was, in Greek and Latin will find the essays completely accessible. In the words of the engagingly written introduction, the volume explores Wilde's "appropriation of classical antiquity" (11) as "typical,… heterodox or distinctive" and situates it with regard to "Victorian social and intellectual frameworks" (9). It achieves its aim to present Wilde's "taking of Parnassus to Piccadilly" as "critical, creative, and commercial" in five sections: I. Wilde's Classical Education, II. Wilde as Dramatist, III. Wilde as Philosopher and Cultural Critic, IV. Wilde as Novelist: The Picture of Dorian Gray, V. Wilde and Rome. The topical groupings, the often lengthy descriptive chapter titles, and the thorough index make it easy for readers to pursue a specific interest. Considerable editorial attention clearly stands behind the volume. I spotted only three small errors, beyond the misattribution of the cover illustration. 1886 (38) seems to be a mistake for 1876, as the year Symonds's Studies of the Greek Poets, Second Series appeared. "Of" is dropped in one place (65). Huysmans's year of birth is 1848, not 1548 (308).

Lamentably, the two dust jacket images are absent from the interior: on the back a delicate cover design by Charles Ricketts for Oscar Wilde: Recollections and on the front a brilliant caricature of Wilde as Narcissus. The caricature's language is partially cropped, but the British Library website presents the whole image. Both the jacket and the British Library (as of this writing) misattribute the image to James Edward Kelly, an artist who worked on Wilde's behalf, not against him. Thomas Nast's signature is readily visible.

The collection includes at least six remarkably revealing essays, clustered mostly in the first third. In Part I, concerning Wilde's education, Alastair J. L. Blanshard's commentary on Wilde and J. P. Mahaffy, his famous Trinity College Dublin Classics tutor, describes in fascinating detail Wilde's falling out with Mahaffy: over Home Rule for Ireland; the relative value of Catholic and Hellenic; and democratizing classical education. In his fluently written chapter on Wilde's Herodotus, Iain Ross extends his earlier accomplished work on Wilde's turn from an archaeological understanding of the Greeks toward a literary engagement. He considers Wilde's annotations to his Herodotus, Wilde's interest in translating Herodotus, and his calling the historian the Father of Lies. Ross places the annotations in the contexts of archeological discoveries and major writers who influenced Wilde as a student. In a sprightly closing he projects Wilde's positive view of Herodotus as storyteller. In a canny meditation on Wilde's notes for his Greats Examination, Joseph Bristow draws on the unpublished "'Philosophy' Notebook" to evoke in detail the synthesizing intellectual divagations Wilde undertook, specifically tracing Wilde's probing of abstraction as a concept. Both Wilde and Bristow move among diverse disciplines adeptly. As Bristow comments Wilde's supple conceptual skills help explain his unusual double Firsts. Gideon Nisbet provides a learned chapter on Wilde's critical response to John Addington Symonds's Studies of the Greek Poets as affecting Wilde's self-fashioning. The discussion is admirably informative regarding Wilde's annotations to his Symonds and what seems to be a draft of an unfinished review of Symonds on Homer's women. Mentioning prominently Wilde's admiration for Euripides, Nesbit makes a convincing case for Wilde's increasing self-confidence in responding to Symonds.

In Part II, on Wilde as dramatist, John Stokes's commentary on Wilde's responses to Greek plays performed in ancient Greek (mostly at universities) during the 1880s contrasts Wilde's positive attitudes with the ironic ones of his brother Willie. Stokes addresses the relation of E. W. Godwin's aesthetic theories to Wilde's attitudes toward bringing together archeological and architectural matters in theatrical...