The Trial Of Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde- 1895
Ed Cohen's Talk on the Wilde Side discusses the trial of Oscar Wilde in 1895. Cohen explores the lack of legal transcripts of the case that relies on newspaper press reports and accounts to document this lawsuit. His investigations into the clarity of the newspaper accounts found that they "were themselves highly mediated stories whose narrative structures organized and gave meaningful shapes to the events they purported to accurately represent" (4). In the second part of his book, Cohen discusses Oscar Wilde's trial and its importance, the results of the fictionalized newspaper accounts of the proceedings, as well as the role of Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray in the legal proceedings.
Oscar Wilde's trial and conviction were major publicized events during the 19th century. His trial changed the way the public viewed sexual behavior as well as homosexuality and the crime of sodomy. Havelock Ellis, the author of Sexual Inversion, suggests, "The celebrity of Oscar Wilde and the universal publicity given to the facts of the case by the newspapers may have brought conviction of their perversion to many inverts who were before only vaguely conscious of their abnormality, and, paradoxical though it may seem, have imparted greater courage to others; but it can scarcely have sufficed to increase the number of inverts" (97). The trial created lasting impressions on homosexuals in that it made being so a crime. Cohen looks at the history of the trial and defines, with great detail, the evolving crime of sodomy. Sodomy is defined as "acts of gross indecency with another male person" (103); however, it has also been known to
Billings 2
include a plethora of sexual acts from birth control to bestiality. The initial law regarding sodomy was instituted in 1533, during the reign of Henry VIII by the English Parliament. Before this secularization it was considered one of the worst sins against divine law according to...
View Full Essay