Reparative/Redempti​ve Reading from Reading Gaol: Towards a Eucharistic Theory of Interpretation

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.