Pierpaolo Martino

WILDE NOWreads Oscar Wilde through our now, through a contemporary sensibility (and approach), in which literature and popular culture interrogate and are interrogated by critical concepts and categories such as performance, celebrity, intermediality, and consumerism. This volume exceeds the shape and meaning of a critical study to turn into a drama of five different acts/moments in Wilde’s life and work: his early performances in Dublin, London and Oxford; the 1882 American tour; his successful season of the first half of the 1890s, his prison years and finally his glorious resurrection in contemporary pop culture. Most importantly WILDE NOW approaches these moments through contemporary rewritings and performances of “Oscar Wilde” in the fields of cinema, music and literature by such artists as Al Pacino, Rupert Everett, Stephen Fry, Gyles Brandreth, David Hare, David Bowie, Morrissey, Nick Cave, Neil Tennant, Gavin Friday. These artists – through their awareness of the importance of being/playing Oscar in their specific worlds and cultural contexts – will also show us that Wilde can be conceived as a subversive, critical role one might successfully perform and appropriate, now more than ever.

Performance, Celebrity and Intermediality in Oscar Wilde

WILDE NOW

Laura Giovannelli

Massimo Stella

Elisa Bizzotto

Alessandro Fambrini

Alessandra Ghezzani

Gino Scatasta

Stefano Tomassini

Francesco Bucconi

This issue of Engramma overviews various critical approaches from today’s Wilde Studies in Italy and shows how the author still provides ample space for debate in current Italian culture. The nine contributions span the fields of biography, autobiography, and studies on the self, with special attention to the concepts of self-fashioning and celebrity and pop culture (Gino Scatasta’s Nebbie londinesi e capziose dimenticanze. Wilde lettore di Dickens and Pierpaolo Martino’s Pop Wilde. Oscar Wilde nella popular culture), semiology and visual studies (Massimo Stella’s A labbra aperte: l’Immagine-Ferita di Dorian Gray. A Portrait… a Picture… a Thing?), film studies (Francesco Zucconi’s ‘Rischiare la pellicola’. Nascita del montaggio e fine del cinema in Salomè (1972) di Carmelo Bene”), performance studies (Elisa Bizzotto’s Oscar Wilde and the Rewriting of Medieval Drama and Stefano Tommasini’s “Crazed by the rigid stillness”. Maud Allan danza Salomé), comparative and reception theories (Alessandro Fambrini’s ‘La storia del mondo non è altro che un sogno’. Hanns Heinz Ewers e Oscar Wilde and Alessandra Ghezzani’s ‘Una specie di simbolista’. Borges legge Wilde). Cultural studies, particularly in their spiritualistic approaches typical of the fin de siècle, also offer privileged critical takes on Wilde’s figure and work (as in Laura Giovannelli’s The Ghost as Artist. Allusive Echoes in The Canterville Ghost). What eventually emerges as a shared critical perspective in all these essays is Wilde’s cross-cultural and cross-temporal identity as world literature.

e187 | “Hardly a Christmas present”, Always Present

Virginia Woolf: la musica del faro. Pagine e improvvisazione

Words and Music rappresenta il primo esito di una ricerca che ha visto coinvolti docenti di università di tutta Italia – tra cui Iain Chambers (Napoli), Silvia Albertazzi (Bologna), Enrico Reggiani (Milano), Augusto Ponzio (Bari) – e musicisti attivi sia in ambito concertistico (internazionale) che didattico, quali il M° Gianni Lenoci. La ricerca è ancora in corso e dovrebbe dare adito a ulteriori eventi – seminari, convegni, performance – e pubblicazioni (volumi, CD, supporti multimediali).

Studi sui rapporti tra letteratura e musica in ambito anglofono

Words and music

Pierpaolo Martino

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