| Acting Wilde: Victorian Sexuality, Theatre, and Oscar Wilde Contributor(s): Powell, Kerry (Author) |
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ISBN: 0521283388 ISBN-13: 9780521283380 Publisher: Cambridge University Press OUR PRICE: $45.59 Product Type: Paperback Published: June 2011 |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Performing Arts | Theater - History & Criticism - Drama | European - English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh |
| Dewey: 822.8 |
| Physical Information: 0.46" H x 6" W x 9" (0.65 lbs) 216 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: 'I love acting - it is so much more real than life, ' Oscar Wilde famously wrote. Acting Wilde demonstrates that Wilde's plays, fiction, and critical theory are organised by the idea that all so-called 'reality' is a mode of performance, and that the 'meanings' of life are really the scripted elements of a dramatic spectacle. Wilde's real issue was whether one could become the author of his own script, the creator of the character and role he inhabits. It was a question he struggled to answer from the beginning of his career to the end, whether in his position as the pre-eminent dramatist in English or as the beleaguered defendant on trial for 'gross indecency'. Introducing important evidence from Wilde's career-launching tour of America, the often tortured revisions of his plays, and the recently discovered written record of his first courtroom trial, this book reconstructs Wilde's strategic dramatising of himself |