Description
Book SynopsisWhile Oscar Wilde’s delightfully-witty comedies of manners receive the most fanfare from the general public and much of academia, Wilde’s most “serious” play—Salome—rightfully deserves an equal amount of attention. Written by emerging scholars, established scholars, and notable Wilde scholars at the top of the field, the far-ranging essays in this book—the first collection solely on Wilde’s Salome—provide new readings of the play, allowing us to better assess how and why Salome either fits or does not fit into Wilde’s oeuvre. Framed in a new light in this collection, this fuller understanding of Salome should potentially change the way we read both Salome and Wilde’s entire oeuvre.
Trade Review"The essays are paired… thematically in ‘common scholarly conversations surrounding Salome and Wilde’s work, as a whole’, and this – fulfilling the aim of the ‘Rodopi Dialogue’ series – enables an organized, but polyvocal reading of the book itself, and more importantly, re-engagement with the play. The fifteen essays, from established and emergent scholar, range over a cornucopia of subjects… Far from producing confusion, this scholarly eclecticism produces some fruitful and exciting juxtapositions… The range of essays in the volume serves both to locate the play in its original intellectual, aesthetic and theatrical context, and to suggest the complex possibilities of twentieth and twenty-first century readings and performances of the text without imposing an erroneously singular or homogeneous overview on this elusive play." – in: New Theatre Quarterly "The collected essays give a comprehensive view of the play and its adaptations. They both competently restate essential interpretations and travel in exciting new directions. The combination of work by emerging and established scholars (the trademark of the Rodopi “Dialogue” series) is an added strength." – in: UPSTAGE: A journal of turn-of-the-century theatre 4/2012 (Summer) "The collection is fascinating and inspiring, wide-ranging and gives impulses for further research. It is to be hoped that more in-depth studies like this are to follow on the work of an author who has always fascinated readers, theatregoers and scholars alike – fashion or no fashion." – Michael Heinze, in: Theater Forschung
Table of ContentsMichael Y. Bennett: Introduction: Salome as Anomaly? Ian Andrew MacDonald: Oscar Wilde as a French Writer: Considering Wilde’s French in Salomé Elizabeth Richmond-Garza: The Double Life of Salomé: Sexuality, Nationalism and Self-Translation in Oscar Wilde Andrew R. Russ: Wilde’s Salome: The Chastity, Promiscuity and Monstrosity of Symbols Helen Davies: The Trouble with Gender in Salome Joan Navarre: The Moon as Symbol in Salome: Oscar Wilde’s Invocation of the Triple White Goddess Tom Ue: Death and Tragedy in Thomas Hardy’s The Return of the Native and Oscar Wilde’s Salome Kirby Farrell: Necrophilia and Enchantment in Salome Tony W. Garland: Deviant Desires and Dance: the Femme Fatale Status of Salome and the Dance of the Seven Veils Richard Allen Cave: Staging Salome’s Dance in Wilde’s Play and Strauss’s Opera Michael Y. Bennett: A Wilde Performance: Bunburying and “Bad Faith” in Salome and The Importance of Being Earnest Robert Combs: Salome and the Shudder of History: A Reading in Memory of Morse Peckham Margaux Poueymirou: The Race to Perform: Salome and the Wilde Harlem Renaissance Peter Raby: Unspeakable Things: Headlong Theatre’s Salome and an Aesthetic for the New Millennium Kees de Vries: Intertextuality and Intermediality in Oscar Wilde's Salome or: How Oscar Wilde became a Postmodernist Steven Price: Salome on Sunset Boulevard Essay Abstracts About the Authors Index
