Oscar Wilde in Vienna : : pleasing and teasing the audience / / Sandra Mayer.

• Author: Mayer, Sandra.
• Place / Publishing House: Boston : : Brill,, 2018.
• Year of Publication: 2018
• Language: English
• Series: Internationale Forschungen zur Allgemeinen und Vergleichenden Literaturwissenschaft 198.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (xii, 386 pages).

Oscar Wilde in Vienna is the first book-length study in English of the reception of Oscar Wilde’s works in the German-speaking world. Charting the plays’ history on Viennese stages between 1903 and 2013, it casts a spotlight on the international reputation of one of the most popular English-language writers while contributing to Austrian cultural history in the long twentieth century. Drawing on extensive archival material, the book examines the appropriation of Wilde's plays against the background of political crises and social transformations. It unravels the mechanisms of cultural transfer and canonisation within an environment positioned — like Wilde himself — at the crossroads of centre and periphery, tradition and modernity.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Oscar Wilde and the Art of Creating a Great Sensation -- An Artefact of Commodified Culture: Trading Wilde in the Literary Marketplace -- Curtain Up: Wilde Enters the Viennese Stage -- Forging the Construct: Wilde the Playwright in Early-Twentieth-Century Vienna -- Consolidating the Construct: The Canonisation of Wildean Drama on Viennese Stages before 1938 -- Modifying vs Preserving the Construct: The Viennese Wilde Revival after 1945 -- Remodelling the Construct: Wildean Drama and the Politics of Disambiguation at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century -- Conclusion: Literary Reputation(s) and the Promise of Canonical Survival, or In Pursuit of the ‘Real’ Wilde.