Oscar Wilde and Reader-Response Criticism: B. Moore-Gilbert

5
Oscar Wilde and Reader-Response

Criticism
B. J. MOORE-GILBERT
While his reputation as a dramatist has been steady, and interest in

his life and personality has grown, Wilde the aesthetic theorist has
remained a marginal figure within literary criticism. The dominant
figures of the mainstream tradition have usually paid the critical
positions generated by 'aestheticism' only grudging attention. In an
essay on Baudelaire Eliot recognised that it was 'a doctrine which
did affect criticism and appreciation', 1 and in The Use of Poetry and the
Use of Criticism, he admitted that at least it contained 'a recognition
of the error of the poet's trying to do other people's work'. 2 But
Eliot's more typical disapproval of his 'aestheticist' forebears is reg-
istered in 'The Function of Criticism' which evidently alludes to
Wilde's 'The Critic as Artist' in arguing that 'you cannot fuse cre-
ation with criticism as you can fuse criticism with creation' .3 The Use
of Poetry counterbalanced its faint praise for 'art for art's sake' by
constructing it as a confusion of literature with mysticism and reject-
ing its separation of art and the world as 'a hopeless admission of
irresponsibility'. 4
As so often, when Eliot sneezed other critics caught a cold and the
later mainstream tradition constituted itself as such partly by con-
tinuing to deny much validity to the aesthetic theory of figures like
Wilde and Pater. In a series of essays from the 1930s to the 1950s,
including 'Arnold as Critic', 'Arnold and Pater' and 'James as Critic',
F. R. Leavis decried its effects and implications. In America, the New
Criticism was equally hostile. Of particular relevance is Wimsatt and
Beardsley's seminal essay of 1949, 'The Affective Fallacy, which
denigrated the preoccupation of critics like Wilde along with the
subjective response in reading:
49
G. Day (ed.), The British Critical Tradition

© Editorial Board, Lumière (Co-operative) Press Ltd 1993
50 The British Critical Tradition
The Affective Fallacy is a confusion between the poem and its
results . ... It begins by trying to derive the standard of criticism
from the psychological effects of the poem and ends in impres-
sionism and relativism. The outcome ... is that the poem itself, as
an object of specifically critical judgement, tends to disappear. 5
Not enough has been done in more recent times, especially within
Britain, to reappraise Wilde's status as a critic. The MLA biblio-
graphy since 1963 includes barely a handful of articles on Wilde's
criticism by British writers and recent overviews of the history of
'English Studies', such as Chris Baldick's The Social Mission of English
Criticism (1983) or Brian Doyle's English and Englishness (1989), which
between them contain four citations of Wilde, confirm the continu-
ing marginalisation of his critical work.
Wilde's rehabilitation would be difficult to accomplish from within
the traditional discourse of British criticism, quite apart from the
problem that the body of his work may not be substantial enough, in
the eyes of many, to qualify him for the status of a major critic.
Firstly there seems good reason why traditional criticism, with its
commitment to defining a role for itself as a social institution, should
have been suspicious of Wilde. Wilde lampooned Arnold's project
for an Academy, contending that criticism's social function is con-
fined to refining the sensibilities of 'the elect', who are encouraged,
according to The Picture of Dorian Gray, to cultivate 'the great aristo-
cratic art of doing absolutely nothing'. 6 His claim that art should not
involve itself in political and social questions (while obviously in
itself a political position) means that a vast range of literature, most
notably the Victorian novel, should not be considered as achieve-
ment of the first rank. At worst, Wilde's essays substantiate Eliot's
charge of irresponsibility, as when Gilbert, in 'The Critic as Artist',
celebrates art as a means to 'shield ourselves from the sordid perils
of actual existence'? Clearly, it is not in these aspects of Wilde's
aesthetic theory that his 'radical potential' is to be sought.
But precisely because 'English Studies', as traditionally conceived,
has come under such pressure from continental criticism since the
1960s, Wilde is now able to re-emerge as a critic worthy of serious
attention. At the same time, this revolutionary body of theory has
tended to be ignorant of the degree to which its ideas are adum-
brated in the suppressed voices of the British tradition. While there
are important analogies between some of Wilde's arguments and

Oscar Wilde and Reader-Response Criticism: B. Moore-Gilbert

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Oscar Wilde and Reader-Response Criticism: B. Moore-Gilbert

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Oscar Wilde and Reader-Response Criticism: B. Moore-Gilbert

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

5

Oscar Wilde and Reader-Response

While his reputation as a dramatist has been steady, and interest in

G. Day (ed.), The British Critical Tradition

You might also like