Professor of English Chris Foss

Professor of English Chris Foss presented a conference paper entitled “Temporal Fusion(s) in Psychic Messages from Oscar Wilde” at last month’s Nineteenth Century Studies Association Annual Conference in New Orleans.

Foss explored how Hester Travers Smith’s 1923 book detailing her conversations with the dead man represents a fascinating instance of such fusion, a unique dramatic rendering of Wilde’s afterlife that does not simply preserve a pre-existing particular portrait of the artist but rather seeks to animate a new creation entirely—a discarnate Oscar stitched together from Travers Smith’s own desires to experience direct access to the thoughts and opinions of the (in)famous author.  Her otherworldly communicator offered denizens of the Roaring Twenties a “speaking tour” from the beyond no less carefully curated than all the popular adaptations on stage and screen since.

In the end, Psychic Messages reveals more about its author and her own day than it provides new insights into Wilde’s life and work, but far from representing an offensive cannibalization of the great wit and writer, it serves as an engaging example of how Oscar will continue to live on in the hearts and minds of his many admirers.