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Wilde and wilder: fin de siècle – fin de millénaire

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 July 2001

MANFRED PFISTER
Affiliation:
Institut für Englische Philologie, Freie Universität Berlin, Gosslerstrasse 2–4, 14195 Berlin, Germany. E-mail: mpfister@zedat.fu-berlin.de

Abstract

This paper traces the presence of fin de siècle Wilde in the postmodernist fin de millénaire a century after his death. He is still alive, not only with scholars and critics but, more importantly, with a wider public and with writers and film makers who keep re-inventing him in their novels, plays and films, radicalizing him into a postmodernist avant la lettre. This ‘wilder’ Wilde is studied here in recent biopics, bioplays and biofictions, such as Peter Ackroyd's The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde or Tom Stoppard's The Invention of Love, as well as in re-writings of his texts, such as in Joe Orton's What the Butler Saw or Mark Ravenhill's Handbag.

Type
Original Article
Copyright
© Academia Europaea 2001

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