When in 1887 Oscar Wilde wrote "The Canterville Ghost" the Victorian ghost story had already developed a distinctive identity. It was a form much in demand throughout the nineteenth century because of the popularity of the Gothic tale of terror, the expansion of the publishing industry and partly because of the craze for spiritualism. In this article I argue that, given his classical education, effervescent wit, and penchant for paradoxical effects, it was almost inevitable for Wilde to deploy all the formulaic conventions and clichés of Gothic fiction for comic effect. Written after Wilde had made his flamboyant lecture tour in North America, "The Canterville Ghost" is both a playful parody of Gothic melodrama and a delightful satire of American pragmatism, commercialism and commodity culture. However, the ebullient irony and the high farce of the first sections of the tale, pivoting on the America's provincialism and prosaic mentality, are replaced in the end by the ethical code and capacity for wish fulfilment of fairy tales, anticipating the motifs of selfishness, forgiveness and especially compassion which lie at the heart of his entire work.

The Blood Stain and the Rising Sun Lubricator: Parody and Burlesque in The Canterville Ghost

M. Vanon Alliata
2015-01-01

Abstract

When in 1887 Oscar Wilde wrote "The Canterville Ghost" the Victorian ghost story had already developed a distinctive identity. It was a form much in demand throughout the nineteenth century because of the popularity of the Gothic tale of terror, the expansion of the publishing industry and partly because of the craze for spiritualism. In this article I argue that, given his classical education, effervescent wit, and penchant for paradoxical effects, it was almost inevitable for Wilde to deploy all the formulaic conventions and clichés of Gothic fiction for comic effect. Written after Wilde had made his flamboyant lecture tour in North America, "The Canterville Ghost" is both a playful parody of Gothic melodrama and a delightful satire of American pragmatism, commercialism and commodity culture. However, the ebullient irony and the high farce of the first sections of the tale, pivoting on the America's provincialism and prosaic mentality, are replaced in the end by the ethical code and capacity for wish fulfilment of fairy tales, anticipating the motifs of selfishness, forgiveness and especially compassion which lie at the heart of his entire work.
2015
Dal gotico al fantastico. Tradizioni, riscritture e parodie
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/10278/3659152
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