References
- Gaskill , Howard , ed. 1996 . The Poems of Ossian and Related Works , 111 Edinburgh University Press . Hereafter, references will be cited parenthetically to Ossian. I would like to acknowledge the helpful advice of Arthur Bradley, Edward Bums, and Timothy Dowland OFM Cap. in writing this article
- Wilde , Oscar and Murray , Isobel , eds. 1989 . 244 Oxford University Press . Hereafter, references will be cited parenthetically to Wilde
- A Woman of No Importance , I 515
- Raby , Peter , ed. 1995 . Oscar Wilde: The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays , 112 Oxford University Press .
- Wilde , Oscar . 1970 . The Critical Heritage , Edited by: Beckson , Karl . 84 Routledge & Kegan Paul . Hereafter, references will be cited parenthetically to Heritage
- Ellman , Richard . 1987 . Oscar Wilde , 209 Hamilton . Hereafter, references will be cited parenthetically to Ellman, Oscar Wilde
- Taken from 'Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young' and 'A Few Maxims for the Instruction of the Over-educated': Wilde, pp. 570-573
- Grube , G. M. A. 1965 . The Greek and Roman Critics 265 Methuen It was a general classical recommendation that sententiae should not stand out too readily from their background. See, n. 3. In this sense, Wilde's preference for a chain of equivalences embedded in the structure of a whole work is classical but, of course, the ostentatious bravura of his sententiae sins against all decorum. My point is that his two-sentence aphorisms are neither Wisdom sayings nor mots in the French seventeenth-century style
- Rochefoucauld , La . 1966 . Maximes , Edited by: Kuentz , P. 209 89 Paris : les Petits Classiques Bordas .
- Moore , W. G. 1969 . La Rochefoucauld: His Mind and An , 88 Clarendon Press .
- Saintsbury , George Edward Bateman . 1906-10 . History of English Prosody from the Twelfth Century to the Present Day , Macmillan .
- Wilde , Oscar . 1913 . Charmides and Other Poems 9 Methuen
- Hoagland , Kathleen , ed. 1947 . 1,000 Years of Irish Poetry , 495 Devin-Adair . I am assuming that Wilde's most successful poems are 'The Sphinx', 'The Harlot's House', and most of 'The Ballad of Reading Gaol', together with 'Requiescat', Theocritus', Impression du Matin', 'Les Silhouettes', "Les Ballons', 'Symphony in Yellow'. All of these use a simple syntax , separate lines, and work much better than his sonnets or more elaborated stanzaic forms. It is significant, for instance, that in The Sphinx', Wilde takes Tennyson's In Memoriam stanza and, preserving the metre and rhyme scheme, re-arranges the stanza as two long balancing lines which pair syntactically rather than as a four-line unit. Curiously, and perhaps significantly, Lady Wilde does something similar in some of her poems, for example this two-line version of a ballad quatrain: There's a giant crowd on the highway--are you come to pray to man,/ With hollow eyes that cannot weep, and for words your faces wan':
- Coakley , Davis . 1994 . Oscar Wilde: The Importance of Being Irish , 65 Town House . There was renewed interest in Celtic designs at the time. Samuel Ferguson's poetry was issued with a frontispiece pattern page to 'The Cromlech on Howth' based on Celtic pattern pages and motifs from the Book of Kells. This is reproduced in
- Raby , ed. Oscar Wilde xii Quoted in the introduction to
- Queen , Great . 1894 . the far-striding terrible daughter of Iarmas (Iron-Death)': The Coming of Cuculain , 4 Talbot Press . Wilde, p. 321. Alongside this 'huge black bird of death' we may put Standish O'Grady's version of Cuculain 'through the wide doorway out of the night flew a huge bird, black and grey, unseen, and soaring upwards sat upon the rafters, its eyes like burning fire. It was the Mor-Reega, or
- Hazlitt , William . 1869 . Lectures on the English Poets and the English Comic Writers , 9 Bell & Daldy . 'So wit is often the more forcible and pointed for being dry and serious, for it then seems as if the speaker himself had no intention in it, and we were the first to find it out':
- Maine , G. F. , ed. 1948 . "What a remarkable phenomenon," said the Professor of Ornithology' ” . In The Happy Prince (The Works of Oscar Wilde , 289 Collins . Wilde, of course, theoretically eschews historicity. Vivian in The Decay of Lying insists that 'To us, who live in the nineteenth century, any century is a suitable subject for art except our own': Wilde, p. 239. He pushed back the date of Vera by a century. On the other hand, mostly, he sets the scene (e.g. of his comedies or Dorian Gray) in his own time. It is by phrases such as One might fancy' in Salomé or ', henceforth cited as Maine) that Wilde manages to evade but yet include the speech idiom of his own time.
- Pater makes a similar observation very acutely on Dorian Gray, 'the ease and fluidity … with which the consciousness of the supernatural is introduced into, and maintained amid, the elaborately conventional, sophisticated, disabused world Mr Wilde depicts so cleverly, so mercilessly. The special fascination of the piece is, of course, just there-at that point of contrast': Heritage, p. 83.
- 1893 . Unsigned review . Pall Mall Gazette , 27 February : 3 Heritage, p. 135. The same point is made in an American review a year later: 'He borrows from Maeterlinck his trick of repeating stupid phrases.'
- 1894 . Unsigned notice . Critic (New York) , xxiv ( xxi ) 12 May : 331 Heritage, p. 143.
- Maeterlinck's . 1979 . Les Aveugles in Théâtre complet , Ressources . See, for example, the extended scene directions which prefix
- 1895 . Pelleas and Melisanda and The Sightless: Two Plays by Maurice Maeterlinck , 30 Walter Scott . reprint of the first editions of Maeterlinck's plays), p. 249. Soeur Béatrice is by far the most Wildeian of Maeterlinck's plays, in mood and character. Interestingly, it is the only one that depends upon substitution of any kind, for the Blessed Virgin substitutes for a nun who runs away with her lover whilst she is absent, and the nun herself is saved though sinful much in the manner of the last vignette of The Duchess of Padua. This can't have influenced Wilde because it was not published until 1901, but it could have been influenced by Wilde. Maeterlinck's Pelléas et MéKsande was translated into English by Laurence Alma Tadema in 1895. This quotation from Act One, Scene Four will give something of its flavour and show how far it is from the Salomé manner. Note the characteristic ellipses, which reproduce Maeterlinck's exactly: 'His letter is so sad that death is visible between the lines… He says that he knows precisely the day that death must come … He says that I can outstrip it if I will, but that there is no time to lose. The journey is very long, and if I await Golaud's return it may be too late …'
- McGinn , Bernard . 1994 . The Growth of Mysticism, A History of Western Christian Mysticism , vol. II , 293 SCM . 'John Scotus Erigena, in commenting on John 1. 23 (Ego vox clamantis in deserto, citing Isa. 40:3), had daringly interpreted the desert as "the desert of the divine nature, an inexpressible height removed from all things". This, the earliest identification of God as desert that I have found in Christian mystical theory'.
- Wilde, pp. 540-547. The 'wearied eyes' are those of Christ
- 1893 . 'I suspect that verbal antithesis is not only the secret of Mr Wilde's dialogue, but of his dramatic action as well.' . The Speaker , VII 29 April : 484 William Archer, one of the most perceptive of Wilde's early critics, seems to have been the first to notice the continuity between Wilde's local style and his larger structures:, Heritage, p. 151.
- Douglas , Lord Alfred . 1893 . Spirit Lamp (Oxford) , IV May : 21 – 27 . Heritage, p. 138
- Butt , John , ed. 1963 . The Poems of Alexander Pope, , revised edn 1968 351 Methuen The association was common enough for Pope to make a joke about it in his dedication of The Dundad to Swift. He puts a note on the reference to this effect: 'Boeotia of old lay under the Raillery of the neighbouring Wits, as Ireland does now; tho' each of those nations produced one of the greatest Wits, and greatest Generals, of their age':
- 1892 . Gentleman's Magazine , CCLXXn April : 476 McCarthy preserves the patronising country-bumpkin sense of Boeotian: "But it takes more than this to convert an adventurous Boeotian into the ideal blend of, let us say, Goethe, Shakespeare, and Baffo, which appears to be Mr Wilde's own image of himself.'
- Lover , Samuel . 1842 . Handy Andy: A Tale of Irish Life , 368 Frederick Lover .
- Price , Cecil , ed. 1973 . The Dramatic Works of Richard Brinsley Sheridan , 85 Clarendon Press . For example, compare 'LADY CAROLINE: I am not sure, Miss Worsley, that foreigners like yourself should cultivate likes or dislikes about the people they are invited to meet' (I. 29-31) and 'LADY CAROLINE: It is not customary in England, Miss Worsley, for a young lady to speak with such enthusiasm of any person of the opposite sex. English women conceal their feelings till after they are married. They show them then' (I. 47-50) with 'MRS MALAFROP: 'What business have you, miss, with preference and aversion? They don't become a young woman; and you ought to know, that as both always wear off, 'tis safest in marriage to begin with a little aversion', The Rivals, I. 2. 7-9, in, The malapropism in A Woman of No Importance is 'Kettle' for 'Kelvil'
- Wilde wrote his article on the opening of the Grosvenor Gallery in 1877 for the Dublin University Magazine. Most of his early poems appeared in the Irish Monthly. After his trial, however, he is not acknowledged as an Irish poet. Thus Lyra Celtica, edited by E. A. Sharp and J. Mathay in 1896 immediately after his disgrace, does not mention him anywhere, although it invokes a bewildering array of authors, including Keats, as Celtic
- Ellman . Oscar Wilde 37 'My Irish accent was one of the many things I forgot at Oxford':
- Maine , ed. The Works of Oscar Wade 695 – 696 . Wilde wrote an article for the Irish Monthly based on his visit to Keats's grave, which included a sonnet on Keats ('Heu Miserande Puer') in which Wilde used the phrase Our English land'. The editor, Matthew Russell S. J., objected to the Our', to which Wilde replied: "I am sorry you object to the words "our English land". It is a noble privilege to count oneself of the same race as Keats or Shakespeare. However I have changed it. I would not shock the feelings of your readers for any thing.' See the discussion of this incident in, from which I take the reference
- Skelton , Robin . 1990 . Celtic Contraries , 4 Syracuse University Press .
- Reviewed in the Century XXIII, November 1881, p. 153
- Wilde's attraction to similes, particularly to short rather than to sustained similes -- that is to say to an overt equivalence -- is another Ossianic marker. Hugh Blair commented that 'No poets abound more in similes than Ossian … Similes are sparkling ornaments; and like all things that sparkle, are apt to dazzle and to tire us by their lustre': quoted in Ossian, p. 384
- Schmidgall , Gary . 1994 . The Strange Wilde: Interpreting Oscar , 61 Abacus .
- Kiberd , Declan . 1995 . Inventing Ireland Jonathan 48 Cape
- Mallarmé , Stéphane . 1945 . Poésies , 52 Paris : Gallimard . These lines, for instance, from Hérodiade's first speech utilise an intricate syntax of dependence rather than equivalence: Par quel attraitMenée et quel matin oublié des prophètesVerse, sur les lointains mourants, ses tristes fêtes,Le sais-je} tu m'as vue, ô nourrice d'hiver,Sous la lourde prison de pierres et de fer
- Kenny , Shirley Strum , ed. 1988 . The Works of George Farquhar , vol. 1 , 108 Clarendon Press . Macpherson did not invent the name 'FingaL' itself. For example, a Lady Fingal was a subscriber to the original edition of Charlotte Brooke's ReKques of Irish Poetry. It is the ancient name of a Dublin suburb and hence possible as a surname, but, prior to Macpherson, not used as a first name. Farquhar's Love and a Bottle (1698) concludes with 'An Irish Entertainment of three Men and three Women, dress'd after the Fingallion fashion':, The play gives a sympathetic portrayal of its hero 'Roebuck An Irish Gentleman, of a wild roving temper' (p. 28)
- Jullian , Phillipe . 1971 . Oscar Wilde , 23 Paladin .
- Stafford , Fiona . “ 'Introduction: The Ossianic Poems of James Macpherson' ” . In The Poems of Ossian and Related Works Edited by: Gaskill . v – xxi . v
- Lamartine . 1968 . Méditations , 306 Editions Gamiers Frères .
- Marcus , Philip L. 1970 . Standish O'Grady , 30 Bucknell University Press . O'Grady in practice recognized this for his medium is really an almost purely conventional modern English, revealing as the main stylistic influence upon it the prose of Carlyle':, O'Grady's version of the Ossianic material was published in 1892
- Brooke , Charlotte . 1789 . Reliques of Irish Poetry , vi London .
- Hart-Davis , Rupert , ed. 2 June 1962 . “ To Lord Alfred Douglas ” . In The Letters of Oscar Wilde , 2 June , 590 Rupert Hart-Davis . 1897,
- 1803 . the versions given in Transactions of the Gaelic Society , John Barlow, Bolton Street . intermingle prose versions very like Macpherson, unrhymed quatrains with each line separated, and ballad quatrains
- Hulme , T. E. 1960 . Speculations , 76 – 77 . Routledge & Kegan Paul .
- 1895 . Saturday Review , LXXIX 23 February : 25 Shaw raised objections to The Importance of Being Earnest because 'the force and daintiness of its wit… breaks our belief in the humanity of the play'. Heritage, p. 195. An anonymous reviewer of The Picture of Dorian Gray similarly recognised 'its great attraction, saving, alone, its almost utter lack of humanity': Heritage, p. 81.
- Owen , W. J. B. and Smyser , Jane , eds. 1974 . “ 'Essay Supplementary to the Preface' ” . In The Prose Works of William Wordsworth , 77 Clarendon Press .
- Blair's text is reprinted in Ossian, pp. 345-408, at p. 354
- 1905 . Vanity Pair , CXXIII 2 March : 309 Max Beerbohm said of De Profundis that "We see him here as the spectator of his own tragedy.', Heritage, p. 251
- Ellman . Oscar Wilde , 352 There is some similarity between this and Samuel Beckett's decision to write in French, which, according to Brian Coffey, "was, I believe, when he did not find an English publisher for Watt that he finally accepted the necessity of writing in French ("dans une langue qui n'est pas la mienne")'. Quoted in
- Tucker's , Bernard . 1994-95 . "What is the Colour of Pi? Conversations with Brian Coffey' . Irish Studies Review , 9 Winter : 35 – 37 . 37
- For example, in The Death of Cuchulain and A Full Moon in March