Oscar Wilde in Vienna

Sandra Mayer, Ph.D. (2012), University of Vienna, is a Hertha Firnberg Research Fellow in English Literature at the universities of Vienna and Oxford. Her work is situated at the crossroads of literary and cultural history, authorship studies, and life-writing research.

• List of IllustrationsAcknowledgementsIntroduction: Oscar Wilde and the Art of Creating a Great SensationThe Stage as Meeting Place of the Arts: Charting Theoretical and Methodological Territory1 An Artefact of Commodified Culture: Trading Wilde in the Literary MarketplaceA ‘First- Rate Theatrical Fashion Item’: Wilde En vogue in Fin-de-Siècle ViennaMore Conformist than Rebel? Wilde in the Context of Late- Nineteenth- Century Literary CultureWriting to be Popular: Wilde as a Professional PlaywrightPleasing and Teasing the Audience: Wilde’s Society Comedies as Artistic Compromise?2 Curtain Up: Wilde Enters the Viennese StageLiterary Cosmopolitanism: Wilde and Fin- de- Siècle Viennese Artistic NetworksAgents of Mediation: Examples of Wilde’s Early Viennese Popularisation3 Forging the Construct: Wilde the Playwright in Early-Twentieth-Century Vienna“Midway between Fact and Legend”: Converging Images of Wilde’s Life and WorkVisions of Salome, Visions of Wilde: Biographical Readings of Wilde’s ‘Symbolist Relic’ on Viennese StagesIntellectual Elegance – Elegant Intellectuality: The Early Viennese Reception of Wilde’s Society ComediesLike a Parody Parodied: The Importance of Being Earnest in Early- Twentieth- Century Vienna4 Consolidating the Construct: The Canonisation of Wildean Drama on Viennese Stages before 1938A Triumph of ‘Old Theatre’: Wilde’s ‘Phosphorescent Salon Philosophy’ in the Contexts of Critical Reception and Audience SuccessViennese Theatre as Actors’ Theatre: Transforming Lady Bracknell into a ‘Woman of Some Importance’A ‘Paradoxical Englishman’ in Vienna: Wilde Reception and National IdentityLondon Dandy Meets Viennese Bonvivant: The Cultural ‘Other’ in Wilde’s Comedies on Pre- World War II Viennese Stages5 Modifying vs Preserving the Construct: The Viennese Wilde Revival after 1945A Case of ‘Historico- Cultural Reminiscence’: Wildean Drama and Patterns of Continuity in Postwar Austrian Theatre Practice and CriticismClassic or Déclassé: Wildean Comedy in Defence of its CanonicityNoblesse, Nostalgia, and Viennese Bonhomie: Wilde’s Comedies at the Theater in der Josefstadt6 Remodelling the Construct: Wildean Drama and the Politics of Disambiguation at the Turn of the Twenty- First Century‘Comedy Exorcism’ between ‘Punchline Pornography’ and ‘Popmodern Parody’: Elfriede Jelinek Goes WildeA Wild(e) Treatment: The ‘Jelinekisation’ of The Importance of Being EarnestViennese Travesties of Wilde: Gender Deconstruction and Neoliberal Criticism in Commercial and Fringe Wilde ProductionsConclusion: Literary Reputation(s) and the Promise of Canonical Survival, or In Pursuit of the ‘Real’ WildeAppendix: Viennese Productions of Oscar Wilde’s Works, 1903–2013BibliographyIndex

"This is not only a fascinating and lucid study suitable for those interested in Wilde’splays on the stage and in theatre history more generally, but is also ideal for those with aninterest in the narratives of appropriation of literature across times and cultures."-Forum for Modern Language Studies, Volume 55, Issue 3, July 2019, Pages 355–356, 17 July 2019.