Salome is Oscar Wilde's most experimental-and controversial-play. In its own time, the play, written in French, was described by a reviewer as "an arrangement in blood and ferocity, morbid, bizarre, repulsive." None, however, could deny the importance of Wilde's creation. Contemporary audiences and reviewers variously regarded Salome as the symbol of a thrilling modernity, a challenge to patriarchy, a confession of desire, a sign of moral decay, a new form of art, and a revolt against the restraints of Victorian society. Less well known than Wilde's beloved comedies, Salome is as enduringly modern and relevant.

This edition uses the English translation done by Wilde's lover, Lord Alfred Douglas, and overseen and corrected by Wilde himself. Appendices detail the play's sources and provide extensive materials on its contemporary reception and dramatic productions.

About the Author
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) was an Irish-born playwright, novelist, and poet.

Kimberly Stern is Assistant Professor of English at Longwood University, USA.

Reviews

"Salome illuminated! This edition presents Salome as a formally complex, richly intertextual, and generative phenomenon of international modernism. Kimberly Stern sets a superbly annotated text between an extensive introduction and several appendices documenting the play's literary, cultural, and visual sources, its reception, and its translation, illustration, and performance histories. The edition offers copious source materials to augment the text, some requisite and some unexpected. Stern's adept and unprecedented selection of contextual sources enhances the powerful and recurrent fascination of a play that has continuously spawned adaptations as well as controversy. This is where all students of Salome should start." - Heidi Hartwig, Central Connecticut State University

Book Information
ISBN 9781554811892
Author Oscar Wilde
Format Paperback
Page Count 160
Imprint Broadview Press Ltd
Publisher Broadview Press Ltd
Weight(grams) 184g
Dimensions(mm) 216mm * 140mm * 8mm