{"id":194,"date":"2022-02-13T23:17:07","date_gmt":"2022-02-14T04:17:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/oascarwilde\/?p=194"},"modified":"2022-02-13T23:17:09","modified_gmt":"2022-02-14T04:17:09","slug":"the-love-that-dare-not-speak-its-name","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/oascarwilde\/2022\/02\/13\/the-love-that-dare-not-speak-its-name\/","title":{"rendered":"The Love that Dare Not Speak Its Name"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

What I found most interesting about \u201cThe Portrait of Mr. W.H.\u201d was the references to Plato\u2019s Symposium<\/em>. It\u2019s a collection of speeches about the nature of Eros, the god of love and desire, and a lot of it focuses on pederasty\u2014the relationship between an older man and a young man. The older man was meant to act as a mentor for the young man and help him develop as a person, but there was also a sexual aspect to this relationship. It was fairly common practice among the elite of Ancient Greece. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In my copy of the Symposium<\/em>, it mentions that when the Symposium<\/em> was studied in the past, the sexual aspect of the relationship was ignored, and it was just interpreted as a mentor and mentee relationship between men. When I read the first part \u201cThe Portrait of Mr. W.H.,\u201d I thought that the relationship between Shakespeare and Willie Hughes was meant to be seen as romantic. However, on pages 324 and 325 Wilde references the Symposium<\/em> and says that the Platonic conception of love is \u201cnothing if not spiritual\u201d and is removed from \u201cgross bodily appetite.\u201d This leads me to believe that Wilde included the references to the Symposium<\/em> as somewhat of a defense against critics who might interpret the relationship between Shakespeare and Willie Hughes as indecent. Wilde might be using the references to say that it\u2019s perfectly natural for Shakespeare to admire Willie Hughes\u2019 beauty because that\u2019s what the Greeks did, and it\u2019s actually one of the higher forms of affection. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wilde even alludes to the Symposium<\/em> at his trial. When questioned about the line, \u201cthe love that dare not speak its name\u201d from one of Bosie\u2019s poems, Wilde replied that, \u201cThere is nothing unnatural about it. It is intellectual, and it repeatedly exists between an elder and a younger man, when the elder has intellect, and the younger man has all the joy, hope, and glamour of life before him.\u201d This defense had mixed results at the trial, but it\u2019s interesting to see the ideas of the Symposium<\/em> get referenced in multiple works of Wilde\u2019s.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What I found most interesting about \u201cThe Portrait of Mr. W.H.\u201d was the references to Plato\u2019s Symposium. It\u2019s a collection of speeches about the nature of Eros, the god of love and desire, and a lot of it focuses on pederasty\u2014the relationship between an older man and a young man. The older man was meant … Continue reading The Love that Dare Not Speak Its Name<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4158,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[327778,47487,41365,512328],"class_list":["post-194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-plato","tag-shakespeare","tag-symposium","tag-trial"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/oascarwilde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/oascarwilde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/oascarwilde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/oascarwilde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4158"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/oascarwilde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=194"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/oascarwilde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":195,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/oascarwilde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194\/revisions\/195"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/oascarwilde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/oascarwilde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/oascarwilde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}