This erudite work presumes its readers be familiar with details of both subjects of its title as it comprehends Wilde's life-long love of ancient Greece. R. has used Wilde's notebooks and his commonplace book; his poetic, dramatic, fictive and critical works, along with a wealth of various works of Classical scholarship. This book belongs among reference works on both Oscar Wilde and the Classical Tradition, and is not for light reading. After briefly introducing his scope and method, R. begins his study of Wilde with accounts of the compelling trip to Greece he made with John Mahaffy, Classics professor at Trinity College. R. places this trip in the contexts of the archaeological studies made by Wilde's father and of the rapidly rising challenges that discipline was making to the idealised perception of Greece. This conflict of the idealism and factual realities of Greece would long be played out in Wilde's mind. R. is most attentive to how it affected Wilde's notions of ancient Greek social classes and the development of Greek tragedy and comedy. This trip to Hellas proved to be no mere vacation.
In Chapter 2. R. treats the trip's impact in the extended, though often creatively interrupted, studies Wilde would make of Greek thought, religion, art and poetry. This in effect encompassed a broad humanistic scheme in which Wilde assesses Classical scholarship. Wilde was no dilettante in this matter. He would become part of all these subjects, just as they would become incorporated in Wilde's intellectual, critical and literary development. R. makes clear that in order better to understand Wilde one must probe the depths of his Classical learning, most centrally, his thorough knowledge and love of ancient Greek language.
The relatively brief Chapter 3, ‘Archaiologia’, and the longer Chapter 4, ‘Philologia’, should each be read as a soros, a ‘heap’, or as pieces worth too much to toss. R. demonstrates that Wilde did not merely acquire the Classical scholarship of such greats as Pater and Symonds, Harrison and Dodds, Wolf and Grote, but assimilated it creatively and critically as had Matthew Arnold, who here receives favourable critical attention. R. views Wilde's intellectual development within the context of Classical scholarship that nourished his own growth. This book well deserves thorough reading by those informed in the spheres of both R.'s subjects. It will be time well spent.
There are seven appendices, four illustrations, an extensive bibliography and an index. R. might have further clarified what must in advance be understood in order to view more properly these twin subjects, the nineteenth-century development of Classical scholarship and the total critical narrative of Oscar Wilde studies. R. does assert that Wilde's ‘new identity as a critic enabled him to make creative play with the texts of the Hellenistic tradition, confident that his readers were, or would expect to be addressed as if they were, as familiar with them as he was’ (p. 123). Perhaps R. expected as much from his own readers. In any case, he ends his book: ‘No matter how Wilde tried, he never could escape that region of his imagination called Greece’ (p. 193). We may only ask, did he ever really try?
