Believing in Mr. W.H.: Spontaneous and Intermental thought in "The Portrait of Mr. W.H."

abstract: Oscar Wilde's "The Portrait of Mr. W.H." is concerned with the question of what it means to believe. Certain aspects and characteristics of belief as depicted in this story rely on a cognitive approach to identify its phenomenological qualities and how it operates. Wilde depicts belief as belonging to a unique kind of creative thought that is non-conscious, irrational, and collective. While cognition is typically understood as controlled, purposeful, goal-directed, independent and private, this discussion introduces two cognitive categories, spontaneous thought and intermental thought, to conceptualize aspects of cognition that are outside conscious control, opaque or inaccessible, aimless, communal, and reliant upon others. These categories reveal the ways that Wilde puts pressure on conventional definitions of, and assumptions about, belief and art in "The Portrait of Mr. W.H."