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Why was Paris so popular as a place of both innovation and exile in the late nineteenth century? Using French, English and American sources, this first volume of a trilogy provides a possible answer with a detailed exploration of both the city and its communities, who, forming a varied cast of colourful characters from duchesses to telephonists, artists to beggars, and dancers to diplomats, crowd the stage. Through the throng moves Oscar Wilde as the connecting thread: Wilde exploratory, Wilde triumphant, Wilde ruined. This use of Wilde as a central figure provides both a cultural history of Paris and a view of how he assimilated himself there. By interweaving fictional representations of Paris and Parisians with historical narrative, Paris of the imagination is blended with the topography of the city described by Victor Hugo as ‘this great phantom composed of darkness and light’. This original treatment of the belle époque is couched in language accessible to all who wish to explore Paris on foot or from an armchair.
Oscar Wilde and Modern Culture: The Making of a Legend explores the meteoric rise, sudden fall, and legendary resurgence of an immensely influential writer’s reputation from his hectic 1881 American lecture tour to recent Hollywood adaptations of his dramas. Always renowned—if not notorious—for his fashionable persona, Wilde courted celebrity at an early age. Later, he came to prominence as one of the most talented essayists and fiction writers of his time. In the years leading up to his two-year imprisonment, Wilde stood among the foremost dramatists in London. But after he was sent down for committing acts of “gross indecency” it seemed likely that social embarrassment would infl...
Exquisite Materials explores the connections between gay subjects, material objects, and the social and aesthetic landscapes in which they circulated. Each of the book's four chapters takes up as a case study a figure or set of figures whose life and work dramatize different aspects of the unique queer relationship to materiality and style. These diverse episodes converge around the contention that paying attention to the multitudinous objects of the Victorian world-and to the social practices surrounding them-reveals the boundaries and influences of queer forms of identity and aesthetic sensibility that emerged in the mid-nineteenth century and have remained recognizable up to our own moment. In the cases that author Abigail Joseph examines, objects become unexpected sites of queer community and desire.
Kniha se zabývá texty z anglicky psaných literatur, které svým způsobem zpochybňují fiktivní, osobní či akademické žánrové konvence ve vztahu k literární auto/biografii, a spíše upozorňují na mnohoznačnost způsobů psaní o životě a konstruování subjektivity. Každá ze čtyř kapitol zkoumá specifický typ transgresivní auto/biografie: pastorální biografii v dílech Petera Ackroyda, Johna Bergera a Paula Cartera; kolaborativní auto/biografie domorodých obyvatel v Austrálii v textech Kima Scotta a Hazel Brown a Rity a Jackie Hugginsových; beletrizované autobiografie A. Newmana a Forresta Reeda; a bioregionální biografie Emily Carrové a Emmy Bell Milesové.
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This first full-length biography chronicles Korngold's life and works from his days as a celebrated Wunderkind in imperial Vienna, through his spectacular career as a composer of opera and symphonic works, to his escape from and Nazis to America, where he pioneered the symphonic film score and won two Oscars. The author provides a richly detailed evaluation of the composer, his relationship with the Serialists, his contribution to film music, and his place in music history. The book draws on interviews with many great musicians, singers, actors, writers, and directors, plus legendary figures from Hollywood's golden age, all of whom knew and worked with Korngold. A foreword by the composer's eldest son Ernst Korngold, a comprehensive discography and bibliography, rare illustrations, and a complete list of Korngold's works make this the definitive biography of a remarkable composer.
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Caspar Wintermans' eagerly awaited and highly controversial biography of Lord Alfred Douglas sets out to defend Oscar Wilde's beloved Bosie from over a century of false accusations, lies, and misinformation. By directly engaging with the source of these attacks, Wilde's De Profundis upon which most previous biographies have been based, Caspar Wintermans is able to show that this was a work written in the depths of despair while Wilde was incarcerated, being passionate, cruel, and deeply untruthful. Wintermans proves that, far from being a rakish homme fatale, Alfred Douglas was in fact a supportive and kind lover who worshipped the playwright and whose life was destroyed by both those who loved and hated the ostentatiously homosexual Wilde. Accompanied by a long overdue annotated anthology of Douglas' poetry, Alfred Douglas: A Poet's Life and His Finest Work is a revealing and moving representation of a tragically misunderstood poet.
One of the most famous love affairs in literary history is that of Oscar Wilde and Lord Alfred Bosie Douglas. As a direct consequence of this relationship, Wilde underwent three trials in 1895. In this text, Merlin Holland presents the original transcript of the Wilde versus Queensberry trial.
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