@article{ART001798076},
author={KIM,TAI-WOO},
title={Tom Stoppard's The Invention of Love: Alfred Housman and Oscar Wilde},
journal={Journal of Modern English Drama},
issn={1226-3397},
year={2013},
volume={26},
number={2},
pages={51-72}
TY - JOUR
AU - KIM,TAI-WOO
TI - Tom Stoppard's The Invention of Love: Alfred Housman and Oscar Wilde
JO - Journal of Modern English Drama
PY - 2013
VL - 26
IS - 2
PB - 한국현대영미드라마학회
SP - 51
EP - 72
SN - 1226-3397
AB - Tom Stoppard’s The Invention of Love is a very complex work: It introduces quite a number of Housman’s contemporaries, John Ruskin, Walter Pater and Oscar Wilde being notable names among them. It is also dotted with direct and indirect quotations from Housman himself and those contemporaries and classical texts, etc. In a word, it seems to be a literary labyrinth. For a critical appreciation of such a complicated work, a very basic method is employed in this thesis of analyzing the work scene by scene and proposing key themes of the work. And the tentative conclusion is that understanding the multi-layered meanings of the rather prosaic title, ‘the invention of love’, is essential in the overall understanding of the work.
The meanings of ‘the invention of love’ in The Invention of Love can be summarized as follows. First, it means the initial invention of love poetry early in the Roman times as they reflect the poets’ real experiences in love and immortalize the mistresses depicted in the poems. Second, it means Housman’s writing of his poetry from his unrequited love experience with Moses Jackson, his Oxford mate, and immortalizing him with his poems. And lastly, it means the very property of love itself that it should be invented so far as we can love anybody. By the way, Wilde, the spokesperson for such a theory of love, seems intended to be a foil to Housman. However, he goes beyond the role, and becomes a mouthpiece for the author himself, and even makes the whole work a quite self-conscious one in that he provides us with information on how to interpret and appreciate the whole work. It is not certain whether the subjectivism and relativism latent in Wilde’s view on art and love reflects the author’s own view on the contemporary world, but it clearly serves as a guideline or a vision in bringing the historical Housman over into the artwork he was making. From this point of view it can be said that like the historical characters in Travesties, Housman and Wilde in The Invention of Love are Stoppard's own ‘creations’, and that the truths about them reflect Stoppard’s own subjective evaluation of the lives of Housman and Wilde.
KW - Alfred Housman;Oscar Wilde;biographical drama;Housman’s duality;homosexuality;self-conscious drama
DO -
UR -
ER -
KIM,TAI-WOO. (2013). Tom Stoppard's The Invention of Love: Alfred Housman and Oscar Wilde. Journal of Modern English Drama, 26(2), 51-72.
KIM,TAI-WOO. 2013, "Tom Stoppard's The Invention of Love: Alfred Housman and Oscar Wilde", Journal of Modern English Drama, vol.26, no.2 pp.51-72.
KIM,TAI-WOO "Tom Stoppard's The Invention of Love: Alfred Housman and Oscar Wilde" Journal of Modern English Drama 26.2 pp.51-72 (2013) : 51.
KIM,TAI-WOO. Tom Stoppard's The Invention of Love: Alfred Housman and Oscar Wilde. 2013; 26(2), 51-72.
KIM,TAI-WOO. "Tom Stoppard's The Invention of Love: Alfred Housman and Oscar Wilde" Journal of Modern English Drama 26, no.2 (2013) : 51-72.
KIM,TAI-WOO. Tom Stoppard's The Invention of Love: Alfred Housman and Oscar Wilde. Journal of Modern English Drama, 26(2), 51-72.
KIM,TAI-WOO. Tom Stoppard's The Invention of Love: Alfred Housman and Oscar Wilde. Journal of Modern English Drama. 2013; 26(2) 51-72.
KIM,TAI-WOO. Tom Stoppard's The Invention of Love: Alfred Housman and Oscar Wilde. 2013; 26(2), 51-72.
KIM,TAI-WOO. "Tom Stoppard's The Invention of Love: Alfred Housman and Oscar Wilde" Journal of Modern English Drama 26, no.2 (2013) : 51-72.
