Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Oscar Wilde and the Art of Creating a Great Sensation
 The Stage as Meeting Place of the Arts: Charting Theoretical and Methodological Territory
1 An Artefact of Commodified Culture: Trading Wilde in the Literary Marketplace
 A ‘First- Rate Theatrical Fashion Item’: Wilde En vogue in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna
 More Conformist than Rebel? Wilde in the Context of Late- Nineteenth- Century Literary Culture
 Writing to be Popular: Wilde as a Professional Playwright
 Pleasing and Teasing the Audience: Wilde’s Society Comedies as Artistic Compromise?
2 Curtain Up: Wilde Enters the Viennese Stage
 Literary Cosmopolitanism: Wilde and Fin- de- Siècle Viennese Artistic Networks
 Agents of Mediation: Examples of Wilde’s Early Viennese Popularisation
3 Forging the Construct: Wilde the Playwright in Early-Twentieth-Century Vienna
 “Midway between Fact and Legend”: Converging Images of Wilde’s Life and Work
 Visions of Salome, Visions of Wilde: Biographical Readings of Wilde’s ‘Symbolist Relic’ on Viennese Stages
 Intellectual Elegance – Elegant Intellectuality: The Early Viennese Reception of Wilde’s Society Comedies
 Like a Parody Parodied: The Importance of Being Earnest in Early- Twentieth- Century Vienna
4 Consolidating the Construct: The Canonisation of Wildean Drama on Viennese Stages before 1938
 A Triumph of ‘Old Theatre’: Wilde’s ‘Phosphorescent Salon Philosophy’ in the Contexts of Critical Reception and Audience Success
 Viennese Theatre as Actors’ Theatre: Transforming Lady Bracknell into a ‘Woman of Some Importance’
 A ‘Paradoxical Englishman’ in Vienna: Wilde Reception and National Identity
 London Dandy Meets Viennese Bonvivant: The Cultural ‘Other’ in Wilde’s Comedies on Pre- World War II Viennese Stages
5 Modifying vs Preserving the Construct: The Viennese Wilde Revival after 1945
 A Case of ‘Historico- Cultural Reminiscence’: Wildean Drama and Patterns of Continuity in Postwar Austrian Theatre Practice and Criticism
 Classic or Déclassé: Wildean Comedy in Defence of its Canonicity
 Noblesse, Nostalgia, and Viennese Bonhomie: Wilde’s Comedies at the Theater in der Josefstadt
6 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 Wilde
 A Wild(e) Treatment: The ‘Jelinekisation’ of The Importance of Being Earnest
 Viennese Travesties of Wilde: Gender Deconstruction and Neoliberal Criticism in Commercial and Fringe Wilde Productions
Conclusion: Literary Reputation(s) and the Promise of Canonical Survival, or In Pursuit of the ‘Real’ Wilde
Appendix: Viennese Productions of Oscar Wilde’s Works, 1903–2013
Bibliography
Index

About the Author

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.

Reviews

"This is not only a fascinating and lucid study suitable for those interested in Wilde’s
plays on the stage and in theatre history more generally, but is also ideal for those with an
interest 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.