Oscar Wilde, Wilfred Owen, And Male Desire: Begotten, Not Made (palgrave Studies In Nineteenth-century Writing And Culture)

This book reads Oscar Wilde as a queer theorist and Wilfred Owen as his symbolic son. It centers on the concept of 'male procreation', or the generation of new ideas through an erotic but non-physical connection between two men, and it sees Owen as both a product and a continuation of this Wildean tradition. "Oscar Wilde, Wilfred Owen, and Male Desire explores Wilde's idea of 'male procreation', which is the begetting of new ideas through the erotic but not necessarily physical interactions of male couples. The study offers innovative readings of several of Wilde's texts, including The Picture of Dorian Gray and Salome. The author connects Wilde to Wilfred Owen through two figures: Robert Ross, Wilde's first lover and literary executor; and Charles Kenneth Scott Moncrieff, the translator of Proust and the person who most directly placed Owen into Wilde's tradition of male procreation. The book seeks to take Wilde seriously as a theorist of same-sex love while allowing for the differences between Wilde's classically based conceptions and those of the twentieth century. Likewise, it situates Owen as Wilde's symbolic son, as both a product of Wilde's theory and as a proponent of it"-- Provided by publisher Front Matter....Pages i-x Introduction....Pages 1-22 Sexual Gnosticism: Male Procreation and ‘The Portrait of Mr W. H.’....Pages 23-39 Shades of Green and Gray: Dual Meanings in Wilde’s Novel....Pages 40-76 Love of the Impossible: Wilde’s Failed Queer Theory....Pages 77-103 Oscar and Sons: The Afterlife of Male Procreation....Pages 104-135 Priests of Keats: Wilfred Owen’s Pre-War Relationship to Wilde....Pages 136-164 OW/WH/WO: Wilfred Owen as Symbolic Son of Oscar Wilde....Pages 165-191 Afterword....Pages 192-195 Back Matter....Pages 196-241