First published in 1988, Textus is the leading journal of English Studies in Italy. Peer reviewed and indexed by the main international databases, it is dedicated to promoting scholarly exchange among Italian and international researchers. Each issue is jointly edited by an Italian and a foreign scholar of international standing and addresses a topical area of language, literature and cultural studies. With its unique coverage of English studies in Italy, Textus is a forum for new critical and theoretical approaches and an invaluable resource for academic research and teaching.
Editor in Chief
Carlo M. Bajetta (Università della Valle D’Aosta)
Editorial Board
Silvia Bruti (Università di Pisa), Stefania Maria Maci (Università degli Studi di Bergamo) e Massimo Sturiale (Università degli Studi di Catania) – English Language Issue
Silvia Antosa (Università degli Studi di Enna “Kore”) e Elisabetta Marino (Università degli Studi di Roma “Tor Vergata”) – English Cultural Studies Issue
Carlo M. Bajetta (Università della Valle D’Aosta) e Rocco Coronato (Università degli Studi di Padova) – English Literature Issue
Issues
The tables of contents of the latest and previous issues are available on the publisher’s website: Textus – English Studies in Italy.
The latest issue of Textus (2021, n.1) is English in Audiovisual Translation Research: Synchronic and Diacronic Perspectives, edited by Maria Pavesi, Serenella Zanotti and Frederic Chaume.
Members interested in editing an issue of Textus must send a proposal to the Editorial Board.
The proposal should include the topic, the names of the editors (member editor, international guest editor and copy editor) and an abstract (500 words max.).
Stylesheet: Textus_Stylesheet
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***Call for Papers***
TEXTUS: ENGLISH STUDIES IN ITALY, 2, 2022 (CULTURE ISSUE)
***EXTENDED DEADLINE***
Oscar Wilde in the Third Millennium: Approaches, Directions, Re-evaluations
Editors:
Laura Giovannelli (Università di Pisa), Pierpaolo Martino (Università degli Studi di Bari “Aldo Moro”), Gino Scatasta (Università di Bologna), Stefano Evangelista (University of Oxford). Copy editor: Etta Madden (Missouri State University)
Oscar Wilde continues to provide challenging food for thought in contemporary culture. Mainly and even voyeuristically approached from biographical or defamatory points of view in the pre-theory stages of his reception, he has subsequently been scrutinised under a wide variety of critical lenses. Wilde’s reassessment started in the liberating 1960s, when all his corpus was finally published uncensored, and has increased steadily in the following decades, during which he has been debated from the perspectives of Poststructuralism and Postmodernism, New Historicism, Postcolonialism, Reception Studies and particularly in the context of Cultural, Queer and Celebrity Studies. At the same time, his dazzling personality has never alienated the critics’ interest in his life – from his family circle to the widening range of his multifarious acquaintances – as confirmed by a recent proliferation in biographical surveys (e.g. McKenna 2003; O’Sullivan 2016; Mendelssohn 2018; and Sturgis 2018). In this sense, it might also be contended that Wilde’s self-fashioning practices intriguingly resonate with a notion of life writing as a complex and sometimes unsettling literary genre.
Protean and contradictory, always at one time surface and symbol, just like his own art, Wilde possesses a peculiar quality that is the gift of genius, i.e. the capability to speak and creatively react to epistemological frameworks that might be poles apart. This is one of the reasons why he has captivated and mesmerised audiences of diverse epochs and backgrounds. Nowadays, this process is still manifestly underway, as Wilde literature can be seen to branch off in multifold directions while also re-fashioning itself and continuing to unsettle neat distinctions between elite and popular culture, as Wilde himself did during his lifetime. In this light, the huge project pivoting on the Oxford English Texts Edition of The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde is both the ultimate proof of Wilde’s canonisation and a landmark that discloses further avenues in research by showing the rich extent of engagements and connections within the author’s macrotext.
The Culture Issue of Textus proposed here aims to showcase and analyse new approaches, directions, and re-evaluations in Wilde Studies that are gaining ground on a global level. Despite the amount of attention aroused by the writer’s personality and oeuvre over time, the new millennium, and especially the last twenty years or so, have laid the foundations for a relevant plurality of academic discussions that call for a close and illuminating (re)consideration. We therefore welcome interdisciplinary and theoretically inflected contributions on Wilde in the fields of Celebrity and Performance Studies, Media Culture, Ecocriticism, Reception and Translation Studies, Cultural, Gender and Queer Studies, Postcolonialism, Irish Studies, Comparative and Critical Theory.
Subjects could include, but will not be restricted to:
• Wilde and celebrity industry: literature, theatre, the visual and performing arts, pop culture
• Wilde’s Irishness and self-styled Englishness
• Wilde and politics / politicised Wilde: socialism, anarchism, capitalism, imperialism, gender politics
• Wilde’s social connections, from the metropolitan scene to a subversive demi-monde
• Wilde and the Law: the ‘gross-indecency culprit’ and ‘Uranian martyr’
• Prison Literature then and now
• Different Wildean textualities: fiction, poetry and drama, essayistic writing, lectures and
journalism
• Wilde’s religions: Catholicism, spiritualism, Eastern spirituality, the occult
• Wilde’s afterlives in Neo-Victorian literature
• ‘My constant Constance’: Wilde and women
• Wilde Studies in Italy: critical history and state of the art
• World Wilde: reception, translations, adaptations
References
Bristow, Joseph (ed.), Oscar Wilde and Modern Culture: The Making of a Legend, Athens (OH), Ohio U.P., 2009.
— (ed.), Wilde Writings: Contextual Conditions, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2013.
Davis, Michael F. and Petra Dierkes-Thrun (eds), Wilde’s Other Worlds, New York and London, Routledge, 2018.
Elliott, Anthony (ed.), Routledge Handbook of Celebrity Studies, New York and London, Routledge, 2018.
Evangelista, Stefano (ed.), The Reception of Oscar Wilde in Europe, London, Continuum, 2010.
Frankel, Nicholas, Oscar Wilde: The Unrepentant Years, Cambridge (MA), Harvard U.P., 2017.
—, The Invention of Oscar Wilde, London, Reaktion Books, 2021.
Friedman, David M., Wilde in America: Oscar Wilde and the Invention of Modern Celebrity, New York, Norton, 2014.
Gillespie, Michael P., Branding Oscar Wilde, New York and London, Routledge, 2018.
Guy, Josephine M. and Ian Small, Oscar Wilde’s Profession: Writing and the Culture Industry in the Late Nineteenth Century, Oxford, OUP, 2000.
Mackie, Gregory, Beautiful Untrue Things: Forging Oscar Wilde’s Extraordinary Afterlife, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2019.
McCormack, Jerusha (ed.), Wilde the Irishman, New Haven, Yale U.P., 1998.
McKenna, Neil, The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde, London, Century, 2003.
Mendelssohn, Michèle, Making Oscar Wilde, Oxford, OUP, 2018.
Morris, Roy, Jr., , Cambridge (MA) and London, The Belknap Press of Harvard U.P., 2013.
Ó Donghaile, Deaglán, Oscar Wilde and the Radical Politics of the Fin de Siècle, Edinburgh, Edinburgh U.P., 2020.
O’Sullivan, Emer, The Fall of the House of Wilde: Oscar Wilde and His Family, New York, Bloomsbury, 2016.
Powell, Kerry and Peter Raby (eds), Oscar Wilde in Context, Cambridge, CUP, 2014.
Sammells, Neil, Wilde Style: The Plays and Prose of Oscar Wilde, New York and London, Routledge, 2000.
Sinfield, Alan, The Wilde Century: Effeminacy, Oscar Wilde and the Queer Moment, New York, Columbia U.P., 1994.
Small, Ian, Oscar Wilde: Recent Research, Greensboro, ELT Press, 2000.
Storey, Neil L., Prisons and Prisoners in Victorian Britain, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, History Press, 2010.
Sturgis, Matthew, Oscar Wilde: A Life, London, Murray, 2018.
Whiteley, Giles, Oscar Wilde and the Simulacrum: The Truth of Masks, Cambridge, Legenda, 2015.
Wood, Julia, The Resurrection of Oscar Wilde: A Cultural Afterlife, Cambridge, Lutterworth Press, 2007.
Abstract submission deadline: 30 July 2021
Notification of acceptance: 10 August 2021
Preliminary papers to the editors: 20 October 2021
Revised peer-reviewed papers to the editors: 20 February 2022
Final versions from the editors to the publisher: 30 April 2022
Please submit your abstract of approximately 500 words to:
laura.giovannelli@unipi.it;
pierpaolo.martino@uniba.it;
gino.scatasta@unibo.it