¶ … records court transcripts from "The Trials of Oscar Wilde," when the opposing council at the trial asks the defendant, Oscar Wilde, if he kissed one of the boys whom Wilde was supposed to have engaged in homosexual practices, Wilde appears unfazed. When asked if he kissed the boy, Wilde, with customary wit, responded that he did not, because "he was a very ugly boy." This kind of exchange forces the reader to ask the question not so much why Wilde was found guilty of gross indecency, but why Wilde ever believed he could be found innocent of the love that "dare not speak its name." (Longman Anthology 2125)
Throughout both of his trials, Wilde adopts a kind of insouciant, provocative pose that seems, to the modern eyes, to be a 'typical' portrait of a flamboyant male homosexual. Because Oscar Wilde's artistic medium has become synonymous with such a posture it is difficult to re-read history with open eyes. However, the answer as to why Wilde thought he could 'get away with it,' would seem to be found, not so much in the actual, textual evidence of either the trials or Wilde's later works during and after his imprisonment. Rather it is the attitude by which sexuality in general, and homosexuality in particular, was viewed by Wilde's Victorian reading public. As Peter Barry notes in his selection on "Postmodernism," rather than assuming categories such as 'homosexual' are transcendent across time and culture, one must read how particular sexual behaviors were 'read' during the actual 'text' of that cultural period of time. (Barry, Chapter 4, 81) What homosexual behavior or a homosexual persona meant to a Victorian before Wilde's trials was not the same as it might be in a contemporary reader's eyes.
Because homosexuality was not 'obvious' to Victorians as it was to us, Wilde often engaged with a kind of cat and mouse game with his reading public...
Drama Poetry How is the more direct performative aspect of drama and/or poetry reflected in these forms? (Consider for example, each genre's uses of literary structure, language, technique, and style.) In Rupert Goold's Macbeth, the language and literary structure are following the same lines from the Shakespearian play. Yet, the way the characters are speaking and performing their roles helps the individual to understand the setting and background of what is occurring.
For instance, Constance's supervisor, Professor Claude Knight, frequently plagiarizes her carefully researched and written work. Later, after stealing from her, Knight runs off with a more attractive graduate student, very unlike the Shakespearean heroes Constance is so enamored of, such as Romeo. But because of the heightened absurdity of the pun-ridden scholarship of Constance, and the ugly nature of Knight, the audience does not necessarily see these events as
The tension of the opening is never fully dissipated even as Achilleus shows his hospitality and makes certain promises to Priam about holding off the fighting for twelve days while the Trojans bury the son of their ruler. However, just as it appears that the situation is concluded, the god Hermes comes to Priam and warns him to leave now because if the Greeks find him asleep in the
According to Flynn (2004), rehearsals and performances of CBRT scripts can help increase students' abilities to read the text fluently. "Fluent readers read aloud smoothly and with expression. They recognize words and understand them at the same time. Reading educators emphasize the importance of fluency -- the ability to read a text accurately and with the appropriate speed. Because there is a close relationship between fluency and comprehension, fluent readers
Climate of Creativity: Teaching English to Young Learners Through the Art of Drama Several learning and involving learning experiences emerge for the early childhood students when both drama and movement are incorporated in the daily syllabus (Chauhan, 2004). Apart from being "fun" for majority of the kids, kinesthetic activities are capable of assisting the young students, particularly those learning the English language, improve interpretation skills, vocabulary, fluency, speech knowledge, syntactic
Origin and Appeal of Drama A generally accepted theory is that drama's origins lie in prehistoric human beings and their rituals which contained music, dance, masks, costumes, a specific performance area, and a division between audience and performance. Later, in Egypt about 4,000 BC texts were written on tomb walls with plot, characters, and stage directions for enacting the body's resurrection. Between 3,000 and 2,000 BC other plays developed which
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