But in a strikingly contemporary sense Wilde looks forward to Paul Tillich or Dietrich Bonhoeffer, for his Christ is an insistent iconoclast and systembreaker, his vision an impetus for a perpetual recasting of ethical or ideological distinctions. It is thus that the artist is Christ's most notable imitator, for in the Wildean schema art is a necessarily dangerous and disruptive force. Willoughby gives a full account of the extraordinary range of Wilde's generic and stylistic departures, and demonstrates that the complexity and surprise of these structural choices accords with the author's aesthetic project. In particular, Willoughby details Wilde's shrewd mining of strains in Western myth and symbolism, and the rich tension between Hellenic and Hebraic postures that is a vital dialogic force in his essays, plays and tales.

The period known as the fin de siecle - defined in this groundbreaking book as chiefly the period between1885 and 1901 - was a fluid and unsettling epoch of optimism and pessimism, endings and beginnings, aswell as of new forms of creativity and anxiety. The end of the century has attracted much interest from scholars of literary and cultural studies, who regard it as a critical moment in the history of their disciplines; but it has been relatively ignored by religious historians. Frances Knight here sets right that neglect. She shows how late Victorian society (often said to be one of the most intensely Christian cultures the world has ever seen) reacted to the bold agendas being set by the thinkers of the fin de siecle; and how prominent Church figures during the era first identified many of the concerns that have preoccupied Christians latterly. These include an active interest in social justice and the creation of new types of communities; increasingly open discussion of the sexual exploitation of children; debates about society's 'decadence'; new ideas about the role of women; and the belief in the redemptive powers of art, pioneered by figures as diverse as P.T. Forsyth, Percy Dearmer and Samuel and Henrietta Barnett.Examining in particular the Christian world of fin de siecle London, the author offers penetrating insights intoa society in which the ritual and culture of Christianity sometimes permeated the aesthetic movement andwhere devotees of the aesthetic movement - like Walter Pater, Oscar Wilde and their disciples - often revealed a fascination with Christianity. She argues that the 'long 1890s' was a decisive decade in which various sections of Christian opinion, both on the progressive and the more conservative wings of the faith, began to express views which set the tone for attitudes which would become commonplace in the twentieth century. Victorian Christianity at the Fin de Siecle is the focussed treatment of religion and culture at the end of the nineteenth century that the field has long needed. It will be welcomed by scholars of church history, social and cultural history and the history of ideas.

'Wilde did not converse - he told tales.' Oscar Wilde was already famous as a brilliant wit and raconteur when he first began to publish his short stories in the late 1880s. They have never lacked readers and admirers, George Orwell and W. B. Yeats among them. The stories give free rein to Wilde's originality, literary skill, and sophistication. They include poignant fairy-tales such as 'The Happy Prince' and 'The Selfish Giant', and the extravagant comedy and social observation of 'Lord Arthur Savile's Crime' and 'The Canterville Ghost'. They also encompass the daring narrative experiments of 'The Portrait of Mr. W. H.', Wilde's fictional investigation into the identity of the dedicatee of Shakespeare's sonnets, and the 'Poems in Prose', based on the Gospel stories. This edition demonstrates the centrality of Wilde's shorter fiction in his literary career, and his continuing development and experimentation with the short story format. Combining myth, romance, and irony, Wilde's stories enthral and challenge the reader. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

This book focuses on the role that the Oxford classical curriculum has had in shaping Oscar Wilde’s aestheticism. It positions Wilde as a classically trained intellectual and outlines the path he took to gain recognition as a writer and promoter of the aesthetic movement. This narrative is conveyed through a broad range of literary sources, including Wilde’s travel poetry, American lectures, and canonical works like ‘The Critic as Artist’, The Soul of Man, The Picture of Dorian Gray and De Profundis. This study proposes that Wilde approached aestheticism as a personalised, self-directed learning experience – a mode of self-culture – which could be used to maintain an intellectual life outside of the university. It also explores Wilde’s thoughts on education and considers the significance of male friendship at Oxford, and in Wilde’s life and literature.

Because Victorian authors rarely discuss conversion experiences separately from the modes in which they are narrated, Emily Walker Heady argues that the conversion narrative became, in effect, a form of literary criticism. Literary conventions, in turn, served the reciprocal function as a means of discussing the nature of what Heady calls the 'heart-change.' Heady reads canonical authors such as John Henry Newman, Charles Dickens, Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot, and Oscar Wilde through a dual lens of literary history and post-liberal theology. As Heady shows, these authors question the ability of realism to contain the emotionally freighted and often jarring plot lines that characterize conversion. In so doing, they explore the limits of narrative form while also shedding light on the ways in which conversion narratives address and often disrupt the reading communities in which they occur.

This engaging, informative collection of Victorian nonfiction prose juxtaposes classic texts and canonical writers with more obscure writings and authors in order to illuminate important debates in nineteenth-century Britain—inviting modern readers to see the age anew. The collection represents the voices of a broad scope of women and men on a range of nineteenth-century cultural issues and in various forms—from periodical essays to travel accounts, letters to lectures, and autobiographies to social surveys. With its fifty-six substantial selections, Victorian Prose reaches beyond the work of Carlyle, Newman, Mill, Arnold, and Ruskin to uncover an array of lesser-known voices of the era. Women writers are given full attention—writings by Mary Prince, Dinah M. Craik, Florence Nightingale, Frances P. Cobbe, and Lucie Duff Gordon are among the entries. Excerpts cover such topics of the age as British imperialism, the crisis of religious faith, and debates about gender. On the issue of colonial expansion, opinions range from Benjamin Disraeli's celebration of empire-building as evidence of Britain's glory to David Livingstone's promotion of commerce with Africa as a way to retard the slave trade and make it unprofitable. Views on "the woman question" extend from John Stuart Mill's defense of women's rights to Mrs. Humphry Ward's opposition to women's franchise and Sarah Ellis's support for the domestic ideal. This invaluable resource features: attention to important noncanonical writers—including a generous selection of women writers; a wide range of written forms, including periodical essays, travel accounts, letters, lectures, autobiographies, and social surveys; both chronological and thematic tables of contents—the latter encompassing subject areas such as England at home and abroad, the new sciences, religion, and the status of women; selections drawn from the original nineteenth-century editions; and annotations to each text that aid nonspecialists in understanding unfamiliar names, terms, and cultural debates.

Wilde Between the Sheets: Oscar Wilde, Mail Bondage and De Profundis argues that Oscar Wilde’s narrative strategies reveal a quick-witted, ingenious fighter—an active agent who tested boundaries and recognized the dangers of doing so, adopting essentialist or anti-essentialist strategies according to whatever shifting purpose he is writing with. David Walton challenges the one-dimensional view of Wilde as a tragic victim defeated by the penal system, arguing that Wilde constructed a self by weaving complex networks of time and paradoxical notions of space, along with a network of literary references and other intertexts. Walton goes on to claim that Wilde fashions a self while simultaneously being shaped by those he fashions, creating a critical dialogue which shows that, by constructing Wilde through interpretive acts, he has already been partially fashioned by Wilde himself.