Oscar Wilde in the 1990s: The Critic as Creator (review)

Melissa Knox summarizes and discusses many of the most important longer critical treatments of Oscar Wilde published in the 1990s, as well as selected shorter commentaries. In her introduction, she presents a brief, highly selective history of Wilde criticism; declares her own critical preferences, which are biographical and psychoanalytic; and comments on recent critical trends. Knox then deals in the book's six central chapters in turn with the criticism of the 1990s under these rubrics: Geistesgeschichte ("traditional" treatments, including formalist ones); New Historicism; Gay, Queer, and Gender Criticism; Reader Response Criticism; Irish Ethnic Studies and Cultural Criticism; and Biographic Studies. Knox concludes with a section in which she predicts the future of writing about Wilde.

The book's main virtues are the general clarity of the writing, the direct presentation of the author's assumptions and judgments, and the detailed summaries of the criticism. These lengthy summaries, however, limit the number of critical works discussed. For the most part Knox restricts herself to books about Wilde and to essays published in one of three collections. The comparative lack of attention to essays in journals reduces the book's value for readers seeking guidance concerning the extensive Wilde criticism not in book form. For example, Knox mentions only briefly just one work by Ian Small, Oscar Wilde Revalued: An Essay on New Materials & Methods of Research (1993), an essential book for Wilde critics. A reader relying primarily on Knox for information about interpretations of Wilde would not be well informed about Small's significant contributions during the 1990s, which include, besides his book, several essays in well-regarded journals and five editions of works by Wilde. This unfortunate, distorting omission may be due to lack of space, though the space would have been available had Knox's summaries been more streamlined. In fact, Knox's antipathy toward Small's views probably influenced her decision to slight them. Small, for instance, has taken issue with Knox's assumption that biographical evidence is both convincingly available and central to interpreting Wilde's work. He also has drawn attention to the state of Wilde's texts, a crucial issue absent from Knox's perspective on both the 1990s and the prior history of Wilde criticism. Although it is possible to separate editorial work from criticism narrowly conceived, Knox presents no rationale for the exclusion. Readers interested in editorial work on Wilde or in evaluations of recent criticism that proceed on different assumptions from Knox's should consult Small's Oscar Wilde: Recent Research: A Supplement to 'Oscar Wilde Revalued' (2000; reviewed in VS 44.3).

Knox's summaries are worth attending to, as they provide abundant detail about the arguments presented by various critics. Many readers, however, will question the sometimes tendentious and pugnacious judgments stemming from her outspoken preference for biographical criticism. Knox's introduction makes clear her vision of Wilde's obsession with personality, one that exceeded concern with his own to encompass personality in general (xxi). Consonant with that vision, her goal is "to reveal the affinity of the best criticism to Wilde's own critical standards, and to show how less successful criticism deviates from those standards" (xxi). The attempt to measure deviation in relation to supposedly unambiguous standards will surely meet concerted resistance from readers attracted to Wilde, a writer who deviated frequently and excessively from "standards." There will also be dissent from Knox's preference for "biographical criticism" as the mark of "original thought," by contrast with interpretations "representing critical theories common in the past decade" (xxi), which she implies are unoriginal. No doubt objections will also be raised to the exclusionary implications of "should" (xx) and "ought" (xiii) in some of Knox's formulations.

In evaluating the books about Wilde, Knox faces the difficulty of presenting her own Oscar Wilde: A Long and Lovely Suicide (1994). She handles...