Talk on the Wilde Side

"Talk on the Wilde Side" focuses on the formation of a new "type" of sexual category in the newpaper reports of the trials of Oscar Wilde, relating this to middle-class discussions of masculinity throughout the 19th century.

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"Talk on the Wilde Side" explains the role the popular press plays in producing and disseminating normative concepts of masculinity. Focusing on newspaper reports of the trials of Oscar Wilde, the book demonstrates how Wilde was presented as the iconic embodiment of a new "type" of sexual actor - the male homosexual. Acceptible norms of journalism, however, meant that the depiction of this new category was limited to that of the "antithesis" of "normal" masculinity. In order to elucidate this journalistic strategy and its continuing effects today, Ed Cohen examines the ways normative masculinity was construed as a problem for the middle class throughout the course of the 19th century. Taking up bourgeois discussions of "manliness" as they appeared in various political, religious, medical, legal, and literary (con)texts, the book demonstrates the sexual mappings that the engendering of the "proper" Englishman entailed.