Oscar Wilde and Nihilism

Colin Cavendish-Jones’s principal research interests are European nihilism, the Victorian religious unsettlement, the Romantic, Aesthetic and Modernist movements, the reception of Classical literature, and the intersection of literature and philosophy, particularly in the nineteenth century. He has written on a variety of nineteenth and early twentieth-century writers, including Pater, Wilde, Trollope, Hardy, Chesterton and Proust, as well as on the reception of Shakespeare in the nineteenth century. Dr. Cavendish-Jones studied Classics at Magdalen College, Oxford and subsequently practiced as an international lawyer in London, Dubai and the U.S.A. After working as a teacher, lecturer, journalist and theatre director in numerous countries throughout Europe, Asia and the Americas, he returned to academia and completed a PhD. in Victorian literature at the University of St. Andrews, focusing on the Aesthetic Movement. He is currently a professor in the Department of English at Xiamen University Malaysia.

Introduction

Part I: A Definition of Nothing

Part II: Nihilism in the Nineteenth Century

Part III: The Artistic Counterforce and the Problem of Modernity

Chapter I: Vera, or the Nihilists: The first Wildean Superman

Chapter II: Not for Children: The Development of Nihilism in the Fairy Tales

of Oscar Wilde

Chapter III: A poisonous book: Nihilism as Sickness and Art as the Cure in

The Picture of Dorian Gray

Chapter IV: No law for anybody: Nihilism as Anarchy in The Soul of Man

and the Social Comedies

Chapter V: The most supreme of individualists: Christ and the Conquest of

Nihilism in De Profundis

Conclusion: French by Sympathy: Gide and Proust as the Aesthetic Heirs of Wilde