Wilde’s ’Comic Gothic’: Echoes of Edgar Allan Poe in “Lord Arthur Savile’s Crimes”

Abstract

Wilde’s admiration for the work of Edgar Allan Poe is well documented both in his letters and in his critical writings. The consonance between some of Poe’s theoretical writings, like “The Philosophy of Composition” (1846), and Wilde’s own Paterian Aestheticism can undoubtedly account for at least part of this appreciation. Recent scholarship has largely neglected to explore the possibilities offered by this literary connection, focusing at most on echoes of Poe’s tales “William Wilson” (1839) and “The Oval Portrait” (1842) on The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890). Yet, Wilde’s intertextual relationship with Poe is by no means limited to these possible influences. Among the many lines of enquiry opened by this perspective, this paper adopts parodic subversion as a possible interpretive tool to investigate the short story “Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime”, in particular. Drawing on Poe’s body of work as a reference point, we can see how Wilde’s comedic stance in these stories borrows from both Poe’s gothic tales – particularly their use of the grotesque and the carnivalesque – and his “tales of ratiocination” to craft a subtle satire of social conventions and pragmatism.