Jean's Just Wild(e) About Oscar

In 1908 Jean Cocteau completed with his friend Jacques Renaud an adaptation for the stageof Oscar Wilde's Picture of Dorian Gray. Wilde's death in Paris in 1900 had made him animportant figure for young French writers, and references to his works can be found in anumber of the very early works of Cocteau. The nature of the adaptation and the way that thestructure of the novel facilitates the creation of a stage version are examined, as well as issuesrelating to the relative importance of aestheticism and homosexuality in both novel and play.The novel confronts issues of artistic and physical beauty by being deliberately vague aboutthem, allowing the imagination of the reader to fill in the gaps. The play adopts a similarsolution to resolve the theatrical problem posed by the portrait

Art · Art history · Gray (unit · Portrait · Medicine · Shakespeare, Adaptation, and Literary Criticism · Spanish Literature and Culture Studies