“Oscar Wilde in Translation”
June 18-September 28, 2012
Curated by Gerald W. Cloud
The summer exhibition opened at the Clark today, just in time for next week’s NEH Seminar (“Oscar Wilde and his Circle”).
![](http://clarklibrary.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/ballad-russian.jpg?w=193)
Measuring the reception of any author is a complicated matter. What criteria should be used? At the Clark, an early decision was made to collect not only the original, rare, and limited editions of Wilde’s works, but also foreign language translations of his poetry, prose, and drama in an effort to document Wilde’s reach and the breadth of his popularity and readership. In the critical study, The Reception of Oscar Wilde in Europe, Stephano Evangelista focuses his anthology on the translated texts as one means of measuring an author’s influence and authority—he points out that only “Shakespeare, Conan Doyle, Stevenson, and Dickens, among British or Irish literary figures have appeared more widely in translations over the past thirty years.”
![](http://clarklibrary.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/dorian-brazil.jpg?w=213)
![](http://clarklibrary.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/fairytales-dutch.jpg?w=236)
The exhibition features holdings from the Clark Library related to the works, influences, and education of Oscar Wilde as well as translations of Wilde’s works with an aim to contextualize Wilde’s movement from one language to another, one culture to another, and offer some insight into Wilde’s influence as a literary figure over a period of time that included his rapid ascension and precipitous fall.