Oscar Wilde and the simulacrum: the truth of masks - 35

Oscar Wilde is more than a name, more than an author.

From precocious Oxford undergraduate to cause cÔlèbre of the West End of the 1890s, to infamous criminal, the proper name Wilde has become an event in the history of literature and culture.

Taking Wilde seriously as a philosopher in his own right, Whiteley's book places his texts into their philosophical context in order to show how Wilde broke from his peers, and in particular from idealism, and challenges recent neo-historicist readings of Wilde which seem content to limit his irruptive power.