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- Title
Original Copy: Neo Victorian Versions of Oscar Wilde's 'Voice.'.
- Authors
Davies, Helen
- Abstract
This article considers the challenge that neo-Victorian versions of Oscar Wilde's 'voice' pose to the relationship between 'original' and 'copy'. I argue that the concept of 'voice' complicates Jean Baudrillard's assessment of the loss of the 'original' in postmodern culture, as 'voice' can be conceptualised as always already absent; voices can be understood as continuous processes of reconstruction. Establishing the significance of 'voice' in the cultural afterlife of Oscar Wilde, I focus on Peter Ackroyd's The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde (1983) and Will self's Dorian: An Imitation (2002) to demonstrate that neo-Victorian 'copies' of Wilde's 'original' voice engage with the tension between loss and recreation which often remains unquestioned in neo-Victorian criticism's invocation of the concept of 'voice'.
- Subjects
WILDE, Oscar, 1854-1900; AUTHORS in literature; STEAMPUNK culture; BAUDRILLARD, Jean, 1929-2007; ACKROYD, Peter, 1949-; LAST Testament of Oscar Wilde, The (Book); DORIAN: An Imitation (Book)
- Publication
Neo-Victorian Studies, 2011, Vol 4, Issue 1, p1
- ISSN
1757-9481
- Publication type
Article