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"Play[ing] Narcissus to a photograph": Oscar Wilde and the image of the child

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posted on 2023-06-09, 14:06 authored by Lindsay Smith
This chapter considers the relations between three phenomena: the image of the child in nineteenth-century photography; Oscar Wilde’s interest in the photographic medium; and the presence of photographic metaphors in several of his fairy stories. The main argument is that Wilde’s fairy tales invite their readers to contemplate the child as an image formed by a relatively new technology of vision. Wilde, however, maintained a critical perspective on the narcissistic lure of the photographic image. Part of the discussion explores his important exchanges with the teenager Louis Umfreville Wilkinson, who began a correspondence with Wilde after the writer’s release from jail. Moreover, the schoolboy Wilkinson sent photographs of himself to Wilde. Wilde’s letters to the young Wilkinson reveal a pressing concern with the temptation to “play Narcissus to a photograph,” since the image onto which one projects one’s desires is also an image of oneself.

History

Publication status

  • Published

Publisher

Palgrave Macmillan

Page range

41-67

Pages

245.0

Book title

Oscar Wilde and the cultures of childhood

Place of publication

Cham

ISBN

9783319604107

Series

Palgrave Studies in Nineteenth-Century Writing and Culture

Department affiliated with

  • English Publications

Research groups affiliated with

  • Centre for Photography and Visual Culture Publications

Full text available

  • No

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Editors

Joseph Bristow

Legacy Posted Date

2018-07-09

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