Abstract
This chapter focuses on Oscar Wilde’s contributions to nineteenth-century gothic literature. It reads his work historically as an engagement with the modernity of late Victorian life, and contextualizes themes that Wilde investigates alongside contemporary interest in ideas such as chiromancy, mesmerism and spiritualism, as well as phrenology and sexology. The chapter begins by examining Wilde’s humorous gothic short stories, ‘The Canterville Ghost’ and ‘Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime’, before reading in detail his novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, as a work of decadent Gothic. The chapter concludes by briefly considering some of Wilde’s later gothic pieces, such as the play Salomé.
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Whiteley, G. (2021). Oscar Wilde and The Picture of Dorian Gray. In: Bloom, C. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Steam Age Gothic. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-40866-4_42
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