Gail-Nina Anderson

Lit & Phil 200

Standing out even among the catalogue of great and good, worthy and famous speakers who have graced the Lit & Phil is the name of Oscar Wilde, who lectured there on "The House Beautiful" in 1883.

This illustrated talk will contextualise Wilde as public speaker within the larger pattern of his career as poet, novelist, arbiter of taste, playwright, aesthete and promoter of his own image. In his Victorian environment Wilde's conduct as a gay man saw him flirting with danger to the point of destroying his own career, but with the posthumous result of being hailed as an iconic figure and martyr to the cause. His paradoxical relationship with celebrity and visibility remains as fascinating as the style and wit of his writings and opinions and his shifting place in both Victorian and modern literary history.

Details on the Talks and Lectures page.