WILDE NOW reads Oscar Wilde through our now, through a contemporary sensibility (and approach), in which literature and popular culture interrogate and are interrogated by critical concepts and categories such as performance, celebrity, intermediality, and consumerism. This volume exceeds the shape and meaning of a critical study to turn into a drama of five different acts/moments in Wilde's life and work: his early performances in Dublin, London and Oxford; the 1882 American tour; his successful season of the first half of the 1890s, his prison years and finally his glorious resurrection in contemporary pop culture. Most importantly WILDE NOW approaches these moments through contemporary rewritings and performances of Oscar Wilde in the fields of cinema, music and literature by such artists as Al Pacino, Rupert Everett, Stephen Fry, Gyles Brandreth, David Hare, David Bowie, Morrissey, Nick Cave, Neil Tennant, Gavin Friday. These artists through their awareness of the importance of being/playing Oscar in their specific worlds and cultural contexts will also show us that Wilde can be conceived as a subversive, critical role one might successfully perform and appropriate, now more than ever.

Approaches Wilde's work through a sensibility in which popular culture and literature are in conversation Interrogates key concepts and categories such as performance, celebrity and consumerism Highlights the centrality of adaptations and rewritings in the very process of reading Wilde's life and work

Autorentext

Pierpaolo Martino is Associate Professor of English Literature at the University of Bari, Italy. He is the author of Mark the Music. The Language of Music in English Literature from Shakespeare to Salman Rushdie (2012), and co-editor of Oscar Wilde in the Third Millennium: Approaches, Directions, Re-evaluations (2022).

Inhalt
Chapter 1 - Oscar Wilde's Aesthetics of Masks and Early Performances: Dublin, Oxford, London.- Chapter 2 - Genius and Celebrity: Oscar Wilde in America.- Chapter 3 - Wilde, Consumerism and the Arts.- Chapter 4 - Performing De Profundis.- Chapter 5 - On the Wilde Side: Wilde in Contemporary Pop Culture.- Wilde Now: Adaptations, Rewritings, Tributes.