Reparative/Redemptive Reading from Reading Gaol: Towards a Eucharistic Theory of Interpretation
Creator
Ritter, Nancy
Advisor
O'Malley, Patrick R.
Abstract
This thesis argues that Oscar Wilde anticipates Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s concept
of reparative reading. In 2003’s Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity,
Sedgwick argues that the hermeneutics of suspicion – whereby the reader exposes the
unjust power structures lying beneath the surface of a cultural object – has become
endemic to literary studies in a way that limits scholars’ political and interpretive impact.
She offers reparative reading as an alternative approach that prioritizes the curatorial
affects of hope and nurture, enabling scholars to find sustenance in cultural objects made
with hostile intent.
Though a very different text from Touching Feeling, Wilde’s De Profundis also
articulates an approach to cultural objects that can productively be understood as
reparative. Incarcerated for “gross indecency” with other men, Wilde refuses to accept
the punitive and disciplinary intent of the prison system, instead re-envisioning its harsh
mechanisms as means for spiritual growth and aesthetic development. In my introduction,
I compare the two texts, arguing that both ultimately advocate a model of reading that I
call Eucharistic. I then outline this Eucharistic model, drawing on Roman Catholic
sacramental theology to crystallize the affective motives and political investments of
Wilde and Sedgwick’s projects. Finally, I situate this Eucharistic model in the current
scholarly conversation on queer theory.
In each of the chapters, I analyze how Wilde reparatively engages various aspects
of the Christian tradition to nurture his identity as a queer man. The first chapter
considers “The Fisherman and His Soul,” a fairy-tale published in 1891’s A House of
Pomegranates, and argues that Wilde undermines the false binary between sensuality and
spirituality by figuring a self-righteous priest and the titular lovestruck fisherman as
doubles of one another. The second chapter argues that Wilde embeds baptismal and
Eucharistic imagery in The Importance of Being Earnest, repackaging the eroticized
Catholicism of earlier works to appeal to a mainstream, middle-class Anglican audience.
My final chapter returns to De Profundis, arguing that we should see the letter as a
reparative reworking of the biblical epistles of St. Paul.
Description
M.A.
Permanent Link
http://hdl.handle.net/10822/1059478Date Published
2020Subject
Type
Publisher
Georgetown University
Extent
106 leaves
Collections
Metadata
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