"Immortal Children of Undying Fame": Preserving a Personal Legacy in Oscar Wilde's "The Portrait of Mr. W. H.". Issue 8 (17th November 2018)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Spencer, Andrew
• Is Part Of: English studies. Volume 99:Issue 8(2018)
• Page Start: 878
• Page End: 889
• Publication Date: 2018-11-17
• Subjects: English philology -- Periodicals; English literature -- Study and teaching -- Periodicals; Philologie anglaise -- Périodiques; Littérature anglaise -- Étude et enseignement -- Périodiques; 420
• DOI: 10.1080/0013838X.2018.1541215
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0013-838X

Abstract

ABSTRACT: Oscar Wilde's short story "The Portrait of Mr. W. H." is the story of a small group in search of the identity of the person to whom William Shakespeare famously (and enigmatically) dedicated his collection of sonnets, a man known only as Mr. W. H. Scholars have debated for centuries the man's true name, and Oscar Wilde jumped into that conversation in 1889 with the publication of his story. In this paper, I argue that Wilde's story is not as much about identifying Mr. W. H. as it is about preserving his own authorial legacy for future generations. In pursuing this argument, I offer a close reading of the text filtered through the lens of Roland Barthes' "The Death of the Author, " and conclude that Wilde sought to perpetuate his name through the facilitation of academic debate about his collected works.