Refiguring Oscar Wilde’s Salome

Michael Y. Bennett is an Assistant Professor of English in Drama at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. He is the author of Reassessing the Theatre of the Absurd: Camus, Beckett, Ionesco, Genet, and Pinter (2011) and Words, Space, and the Audience: The Theatrical Tension Between Empiricism and Rationalism (2012). He is also the co-editor of Eugene O’Neill’s One-Act Plays: New Critical Perspectives (2012).

"The essays are paired… thematically in ‘common scholarly conversations surrounding Salome and Wilde’s work, as a whole’, and this – fulfilling the aim of the ‘Rodopi Dialogue’ series – enables an organized, but polyvocal reading of the book itself, and more importantly, re-engagement with the play. The fifteen essays, from established and emergent scholar, range over a cornucopia of subjects… Far from producing confusion, this scholarly eclecticism produces some fruitful and exciting juxtapositions… The range of essays in the volume serves both to locate the play in its original intellectual, aesthetic and theatrical context, and to suggest the complex possibilities of twentieth and twenty-first century readings and performances of the text without imposing an erroneously singular or homogeneous overview on this elusive play." – in: New Theatre Quarterly"The collected essays give a comprehensive view of the play and its adaptations. They both competently restate essential interpretations and travel in exciting new directions. The combination of work by emerging and established scholars (the trademark of the Rodopi “Dialogue” series) is an added strength." – in: UPSTAGE: A journal of turn-of-the-century theatre 4/2012 (Summer)"The collection is fascinating and inspiring, wide-ranging and gives impulses for further research. It is to be hoped that more in-depth studies like this are to follow on the work of an author who has always fascinated readers, theatregoers and scholars alike – fashion or no fashion." – Michael Heinze, in: Theater Forschung

• Michael Y. Bennett: Introduction: Salome as Anomaly?Ian Andrew MacDonald: Oscar Wilde as a French Writer: Considering Wilde’s French in SaloméElizabeth Richmond-Garza: The Double Life of Salomé: Sexuality, Nationalism and Self-Translation in Oscar WildeAndrew R. Russ: Wilde’s Salome: The Chastity, Promiscuity and Monstrosity of SymbolsHelen Davies: The Trouble with Gender in SalomeJoan Navarre: The Moon as Symbol in Salome: Oscar Wilde’s Invocation of the Triple White GoddessTom Ue: Death and Tragedy in Thomas Hardy’s The Return of the Native and Oscar Wilde’s SalomeKirby Farrell: Necrophilia and Enchantment in Salome Tony W. Garland: Deviant Desires and Dance: the Femme Fatale Status of Salome and the Dance of the Seven VeilsRichard Allen Cave: Staging Salome’s Dance in Wilde’s Play and Strauss’s Opera Michael Y. Bennett: A Wilde Performance: Bunburying and “Bad Faith” in Salome and The Importance of Being EarnestRobert Combs: Salome and the Shudder of History: A Reading in Memory of Morse PeckhamMargaux Poueymirou: The Race to Perform: Salome and the Wilde Harlem RenaissancePeter Raby: Unspeakable Things: Headlong Theatre’s Salome and an Aesthetic for the New MillenniumKees de Vries: Intertextuality and Intermediality in Oscar Wilde's Salome or: How Oscar Wilde became a PostmodernistSteven Price: Salome on Sunset BoulevardEssay AbstractsAbout the AuthorsIndex