On Thursday Nicholas Frankel presented on Oscar Wilde. The talk was mostly concerned with the construction of identity and the relationship between life and art.
After his release from prison, Wilde changed his name to Sebastian Melmoth to disassociate himself from the disgrace associated with his original name. He chose Sebastian after Saint Sebastian and Melmoth after a gothic novel character. The name implies his rootlessness and his willingness to be a martyr.
Wilde remade his identity several times during his life, connecting himself each time with a distinct cultural identity. His full name is full of Irish pride, but then at Oxford he remade himself as something of a celebrity and later as a bright young thing in London, using the name Oscar Wilde, before finally becoming Sebastian Melmoth in France after his release from prison.
Art is often said to imitate life and this can be seen in Wilde’s The Importance of Being Ernest. The characters in the play take on new names and identities like Wilde as Sebastian. Even in his last years of life and declining health, Wilde was always in the pursuit of beauty.
Frankel only passingly referenced Wilde’s short stories, some of which we have read for class and he didn’t really discuss disability, but I think some of his insights about the ways in which we construct identity can be useful in a disability framework.
