Wilde and the Rewriting of Medieval Drama

The essay traces the influence of Medieval vernacular drama in the British culture of the fin de siècle and early twentieth century. In particular, it argues that Oscar Wilde’s plays Salomé (1891) and the unfinished La Sainte Courtisane (1893), as well as the short story The Portrait of Mr. W. H. (1889, 1893), bear traces of the revival of Medieval theatre that began in France in the 1890s and subsequently disseminated in other European countries. In England, this revival had an unexpected champion in Walter Pater and most probably reached Wilde also through him. Wilde, and others such as Vernon Lee, delved into both Pater’s vision of the Middle Ages and into Medieval ritualistic and participatory performances in order to craft dramas better suited to the turn of the century, with their radical epistemological transformations. Wilde, Lee, and other authors did so within a network of transcultural aesthetic exchanges which – especially in Wilde’s case - generated works that can be construed as examples of world literature.