Cycnos | Numéros | Volume 20.2 - La représentation en question -Microlectures-

Résumé :

The praise of forgery is one of the characteristics of the aesthetics of Oscar Wilde. In The Portrait of Mr. W. H., Wilde attempts to renew the definition of Art by transgressing and/or deconstructing the demarcation between the true and the false, the real and the fictive. In putting forward the equivalence between literary forgery and perfect representation, he shows a purely imaginary world where the false refers only to the false, where the false produces nothing but the false. It is a world characterized by the auto-circularity of signs, but made incomplete by its potential intertextual enlargement. The sequence of fakes and deceptions — a forged picture, the appropriated “Willie Hughes”; theory, a counterfeit literary study, a false suicide… — betrays the Wildean faith in words as the fundamental imposture of the enunciator, and reveals the extreme scepticism of the author towards the truth that words are supposed to convey in order to “represent.”;

Date de publication : 2005-06-25