Article

A Moment of Gravity

April 11, 2016March 31, 2024 John Cooper1 Comment

A Poignant Moment at the Falls

You may recall that in my recent review of Wilde and Niagara I cited the entry that Oscar Wilde’s had made in the guestbook of his hotel on the Canadian side at Niagara Falls.

Well, having visited the area myself, I now have an illustration of his inscription (above) and, to reiterate, this is what it says:

the roar of these waters is like the roar when the “mighty wave democracy breaks against the shores where kings lie couched at ease.”

When Oscar wrote this he was doing several things at once.

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Announcement

Wilde on the Borders

March 6, 2016March 31, 2024 John Cooper3 Comments

Wilde Event | Niagara University

Wilde on the Borders: Symposium, Theatre, and Art
April 2, 2016, Niagara University, N.Y.

Located just four miles north of Niagara Falls, N.Y., along the U.S./Canadian border, Niagara University announces “Wilde on the Borders”, a day of lively academic discussions hosted by the English department which celebrates Wilde’s complexity through the forms he expressed: essays, theatre and art.

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Review

Conference: Legacy of Oscar Wilde

December 27, 2014March 31, 2024 John Cooper2 Comments

Wilde Conference at Drew University, June 1-2, 2012

Who Owns The Legacy of Oscar Wilde?

A REVIEW
—by John Cooper—

So it was to Drew University (Madison, NJ) hopeful of enlightenment as to the nominal question posed by the conference.

To the question of who owns the legacy of an author in the public domain the answer is usually nobody. However, this conference was a reminder, should it be needed, that in the sphere of Wilde studies nobody often translates into anybody willing to marry the subject, for better or worse, to their own vision of Wilde. This is not surprising given Wilde’s dualities of nationality, gender and style, and over the years writers have enjoyed an open season and taken careful aim at their subject, giving us some quite specific visions of Oscar.

At least in a forum such as this the subject becomes a moving target. So we had varied questions, not only of the Irish Wilde and the gay Wilde, as might be expected, but also an array of topics ranging from thesis to the practical; subjects from Wilde’s reputation as a classicist to the ownership of his work and imagery.

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