Oscar Wilde: the Art of Criticism and Notes on an Aesthetics in the Making

• Grant number: 23/13064-9
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Post-doctor
• Start date: March 25, 2024
• End date: July 25, 2024
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Literature - Modern Foreign Literatures
• Principal Investigator: Laura Patricia Zuntini de Izarra
• Grantee: Fábio Waki
• Supervisor: Joseph Eugene Bristow
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), United States
• Associated to the scholarship: 22/09946-3 - Oscar Wilde: the Art of Criticism and Notes on an Aesthetics in the Making, BP.PD

Abstract

The research I am currently conducting at W.B. Yeats Chair of Irish Studies at the University of São Paulo aims at systematising the influence of the classics on Oscar Wilde's critical theory, focusing on a topic of interest overlooked even by the most recent studies on his literature: namely, how his critical theory subverts conceptions of criticism formulated by his precursors with basis on precepts from the classics and thereby challenges the ordinary notion of literary criticism as an interpretive practice by reconceiving it as a creative one. The research proposal that I now submit to FAPESP aims at extending these investigations to the University of California in Los Angeles and to William Andrews Clark Memorial Library so that I can personally examine the notebooks that Wilde kept for his Literae Humaniores (Classics) studies at the University of Oxford (1874-78). This internship in Los Angeles is vital for my research for two reasons: first, because these notebooks, many of which have never been published, gather valuable information on how he read the classics as a young scholar and on how this literature came to ground several aspects of the critical theory he would then perfect throughout his career. Second, because it will allow me to include in my final monograph unpublished fragments from these notebooks, fresh materials that will present to the Brazilian public this writer's less-known facet as an intellectual and which will ultimately open up a new field of studies on his literature in the country: one focused on his critical theory and on his pre and protoliterary productions as a thinker and artist in formation.