This panel will consider Oscar Wilde’s complex personal relationship with his nationality, identity, and international literary and musical influences. Wilde was an Irish playwright educated at Oxford who found his greatest literary success in London. Nevertheless, writing to the author and critic Edmond de Goncourt, Wilde claimed that he was, “Français de sympathie, je suis Irlandais de race, et les Anglais m’ont condamné à parler le langage de Shakespeare” (“French by sympathy, I am Irish by race, and the English have condemned me to speak the language of Shakespeare”). This “sympathy” is revealed in Wilde’s work which abounds in references to France and French culture, for instance, in A Woman of No Importance, good Americans are said to “go to Paris” when they die. Wilde himself is buried in Paris’s Père Lachaise Cemetery, a place of continued pilgrimage given his significance to both literature and LGBTQ+ history.

Wilde’s Francophilia is well-attested in scholarship. Joseph Donohue’s editorial work has produced an authoritative version of Wilde’s Salomé and Salome in its French and English forms for OUP’s Complete Works series (2013). Kelver Hartley’s Oscar Wilde: L’Influence francaise dans son oeuvre (1935) and Jacques De Langlade’s Oscar Wilde, écrivain francais (1975) demonstrate the historical interest in this subject. The Reception of Oscar Wilde in Europe, edited by Stefano Evangelista (2010), contains chapters by Richard Hibbitt, Emily Eels and Victoria Reid exploring the reception of Wilde’s work in France. Wilde’s Paris and his interaction with its literary scene has been considered in Véronique Daviau’s Oscar Wilde & Paris (2012) and David Rose’s Oscar Wilde’s Elegant Republic (2015), and will also be explored in forthcoming publications such as Oscar Wilde’s Paris (edited by Gregory Mackie and Colette Colligan). The presentations of our panellists engage with this body of criticism and map onto Wilde’s many interactions with France, the French language and French culture both during his lifetime and into the twentieth century. They investigate the meaning of Wilde’s claim to be “French by sympathy” and how far his self-characterisation was correct.

After a brief welcome from our presider/organizer, Aaron Eames, independent scholar and Oscar Wilde Society committee member, the panel will begin with Rebekah Lawler, PhD-student at Middle Tennessee State University, who will present her paper, “The Importance of Being Sebastian: The Picture of Dorian Gray as a French Decadent Text.” This paper speaks directly to the theme of the panel by considering how Wilde’s most famous work was influenced by contemporary French literature. Lawler will highlight not only the decadent themes of Wilde’s novel but the way in which Wilde deliberately aligned himself with the French decadent movement. Beginning with a paper on Wilde’s most familiar text provides a convenient access point for the audience and leads into the less well-known influences considered by the following speakers.

The next speaker, UCLA undergraduate Samantha Reavis, will present “Echoes of Aestheticism: The Influence of Oscar Wilde’s Poetry on French Music,” exploring the way in which Wilde’s work influenced the compositions of Reynaldo Hahn and Charles Koechlin. This presentation argues that Wilde’s decadent aestheticism and rich poetic imagery found a unique resonance in the French musical landscape of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Our final panellist, Sandra M. Leonard, Assistant Professor of English at Kutztown University, will compare two major figures in nineteenth-century literature in her paper “Wilde and Rachilde: Sympathetic Appreciations.” She will outline Wilde’s fascination with Rachilde’s novel Monsieur Venus and present the sympathy between the two authors as a shared appreciation of social defiance through literary art.

All panellists will limit their paper to 10-12 minutes to allow time for a respondent. Our respondent, Margaret D. Stetz, Mae and Robert Carter Professor of Women's Studies and Professor of Humanities at the University of Delaware, will comment upon and synthesize the essays, bringing out their cross-currents to encourage inter-panel discussion and audience Q&A.

At a time when works by LGBTQ+ authors are being removed from schools, it is all the more important to put authors like Oscar Wilde into focus. Additionally, as Wilde’s life and legend have become so intertwined, academic study is key to exploring his transnational resemblances. This is the second panel organized by the London-based Oscar Wilde Society (scholarly journal The Wildean, Hon. patrons include Merlin Holland and Stephen Fry); the first was “Oscar Wilde on Tour” (MLA Philadelphia, 2024). The panel incorporates a diversity of voices bringing together speakers from different disciplines and career stage and forging a link between the MLA and the OWS (400+ members worldwide).