“That Strange Mimicry of Life by the Living”
“That Strange Mimicry of Life by the Living”
Queer Reading in Oscar Wilde’s “The Portrait of Mr. W.H.”
In a reading of Oscar Wilde’s “The Portrait of Mr. W.H.,” which presents a theory of Shakespeare’s Sonnets (purporting to identify the addressee of the dedication) and a narrative about the transmission, between men, of that theory, Chapter Five explores Wilde’s understanding of gay reading; Wilde’s text ultimately points to a paradoxical identification with an inhuman form, which links the question of gay reading to the uncanny mode of survival through which a beautiful boy can be said to live on “in” a literary text.
Keywords: Literary tradition, Literary and cultural transmission, Queer literary criticism, Queer theory, Initiation and Development, Close Reading, Potentiality, Temporality of Consciousness
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