Social Notes: Oscar Wilde,Francis Bacon,and the Medium of Aphorism |
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Authors: | Simon Reader |
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Institution: | 1. University of Torontosimon.reader@utoronto.ca |
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Abstract: | This paper reads Oscar Wilde's aphoristic style in terms of the note-taking practices he develops as an undergraduate at Oxford. It treats his use of small, mobile pieces of language as a strategy for dealing with methodological uncertainty in a time of curricular upheaval. His trademark style is perhaps best understood as a form of social notation, whereby pieces of information behave as actors seeking sociality and recombination, rather than placement in systematic arrangements. One significant unpublished source – the ‘Notebook on Philosophy’ – discloses Wilde's engagement with a surprising aphoristic precursor, Francis Bacon, who deploys the form for similar purposes. In modelling a form of non-teleological informational assembly, Wilde's notebooks also body forth the utopian social life he conceives in his later critical writings. |
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Keywords: | Wilde Oscar Bacon Francis The Picture of Dorian Gray Oxford Notebooks aphorism sociality |
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