Oscar???s Shadow: Wilde, Homosexuality and Modern Ireland [Hardcover]

If perceptions of sexual identity evolve partly through public events, how then did Irish media and literary sources configure Wilde???s homosexuality during his trials and after? Wilde???s homosexuality was a contested discourse within twentieth-century Ireland, a discourse that became interconnected with Irish cultural nationalism. Thus Wilde became a weathervane for the rare but contentious discussions of homosexuality in Ireland, and his life and his writings usefully intertwine within these debates. Oscar???s Shadowsets the historical context for cultural and legal perceptions of homosexuality in Ireland.

This book is the first study of the formation of the idea of homosexuality in Ireland into the twentieth century and centers on an account of Wilde???s visible presence as sexual other, analyzing the strategies of normalization used to police his unnameable sin within Irish media and literary accounts. Using contemporary Irish newspaper reports of the Wilde trials of 1895, previously unpublished archival material, and a significant body of Irish critical studies, biographies and dramatizations of Wilde???s life and sexuality, Walshe argues that Wilde in Irish culture was perceived not so much as Oscar Wilde the unspeakable but much more as Oscar Wilde the dissident Irishman. Wilde, famous for his writings and notorious for his sexuality, is central for perceptions of homosexuality in modern Ireland.A masterpiece of cultural studies scholarship, this book explores how the figure of the controversial Oscar Wilde has served as a Rorschach test for the people of Ireland, who have view him as a reflection of their own hopes and fears and have not perceived and promulgated a defensibly accurate vision of the man himself. Using extensive, meticulous research, Walshe (English, Univ. College Cork) demonstrates how the Irish were less eager than the British and Americans to condemn Wilde for his homosexuality, and how they initially ignoredlÃf