The Picture of Dorian Gray in the Twenty-First Century
New Essays on Oscar Wilde's Classic Novel
Published on 3. November 2025
Book
Hardback
344 pages
978-0-19-065902-8 (ISBN)
Description
This collection of new essays devoted to Oscar Wilde's classic novel presents new critical work by prominent scholars that deal with numerous aspects of the famed novel. Essays range from early literary influences on the novel and its controversial early reception to its afterlife in literature, film, dance, photography, theatre, and television.
In addition to considering Dorian Gray as an iconic queer work of fiction that daringly challenged late-Victorian literary practices, the volume explores Wilde's novel in terms of the history of the European novel and the book's innovations as a gothic, supernatural work that defied the conventions of nineteenth-century realism. Along with striking illustrations of the novel since its publication --including images from popular adaptations-- the volume includes never-before translated early reviews of the novel in the European press along with an unpublished parody of Wilde's novel in the form of an "examination paper" by the English writer Max Beerbohm. Edited by Richard Kaye, this volume offers multiple and fascinating perspectives on Oscar Wilde's classic in fourteen highly readable essays.
In addition to considering Dorian Gray as an iconic queer work of fiction that daringly challenged late-Victorian literary practices, the volume explores Wilde's novel in terms of the history of the European novel and the book's innovations as a gothic, supernatural work that defied the conventions of nineteenth-century realism. Along with striking illustrations of the novel since its publication --including images from popular adaptations-- the volume includes never-before translated early reviews of the novel in the European press along with an unpublished parody of Wilde's novel in the form of an "examination paper" by the English writer Max Beerbohm. Edited by Richard Kaye, this volume offers multiple and fascinating perspectives on Oscar Wilde's classic in fourteen highly readable essays.
Reviews / Votes
This new book discusses the cultural context of Dorian Gray in the 19th century, both British and European; relevant media of modernism of the 20th century; and 21st-century art and pop culture. The essays in this new book are helpfully researched, well written, and useful in relation to adaptational art and contemporary theories. Recommended for advanced undergraduates and research libraries. * T. Hoagwood, CHOICE *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Target group
College/higher education
Illustrations
35
Dimensions
Height: 25 mm
Width: 177 mm
Thickness: 254 mm
Weight
750 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-19-065902-8 (9780190659028)
Copyright in bibliographic data is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or its licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Richard A. Kaye
The Picture of Dorian Gray in the Twenty-First Century
New Essays on Oscar Wilde's Classic Novel
Book
01/2026
Oxford University Press Inc
€25.00
Available immediately
Person
Richard A. Kaye is Professor of English at Hunter College and in the Ph.D. Program in English at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He is the editor of The D. H. Lawrence Review, the fifty-year old scholarly journal devoted to the British writer.
Content
Introduction: The Haunting of Dorian Gray The Precedents, Sources, and Literary Contexts of Dorian Gray 1: The Picture of Dorian Gray and the Aesthetic Tradition: Faithful Allusion, Perilous Misquotation 2: The Picture That Failed, or the Light of Dorian Gray 3: "What Never Dies": The Picture of Dorian Gray and Its Afterlife in French Literature and Art The Visual Imagination of The Picture of Dorian Gray 4: Picturing Dorian: Temporality, Abstraction, and Modernity in The Picture of Dorian Gray 5: Illustrating Dorian Gray: The Contingent Ephemerality of Beauty Dorian Gray's Philosophical, Cultural, and Erotic Entanglements 6: The Vitality of Dorian Gray: Darwinism, Philosophy, Life 7: "A Form of Reverie, a Malady of Dreaming": Dorian Gray, Personality, and Mass Culture 8: Dorian Gray's Generic Hybridity and the Aesthetics of Queer Form The Formal Vicissitudes of a Decadent Novel 9: Exquisite Fantasy: Language and Anti-Mimesis in The Picture of Dorian Gray 10: Fin-de-Siecle Feelings: Melodrama and the Aesthetics and Ethics of Emotion in Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray 11: The Most Decadent Chapter: Ornamentation, Influence, and the Challenge to Realism in The Picture of Dorian Gray Dorian Gray's Afterlife in Fiction, Film, Theater, Dance, and Performance 12: The Vienna "Dorian Gray Epidemic" of 1907: Theatrical Distortion, Critical Dissent, and the First Stagings of Wilde's Novel 13: Red Herrings and Yellow Birds: The 1945 Hollywood Film The Picture of Dorian Gray 14: Dorian Gray Forever: Decadence, Glamor, and the Vicissitudes of Pop Culture Adaptation