Wilde at Heart

Abstract: This essay argues that Wilde's final work of criticism, Epistola: in carcere et vinculis (better known by the title De Profundis ), offers a different genealogy for queer theory—one reflective of the queer subject's problematic desire for conventions—at the same time it asserts its place at the end of a Victorian genealogy of ethical contemplation. Wilde's critique of Lord Alfred Douglas's bad form in the Epistola is an indictment of "Bosie's" youthful disregard for both aesthetics and the rules of personal intimacy. In what evolves into the genre of epistolary critique, Wilde cultivates an aesthetics of intimacy founded on tact, "the faculty of saying or doing the right thing at the right time." Ironically, Wilde emerges as a Victorian figure who ultimately eschews excess and Paterian ephemerality by giving over his notorious exceptionalism to a desire for "conventional," durational love and respect.