This doctoral research project shows that the narratives selected for close analysis not only allow for an intimate re-acquaintance with Oscar Wilde according to the multifarious angles developed in the stories but also that the very nature of this re-acquaintance can only be fragmented, either because it is memory-bound or because of the very medium narrators make use of in the novels, i.e.
The historical basis of the novels actually stands at the centre of each chapter, all the while highlighting that the fictional elements allow for a renewed interest in Wilde that borders on admiration and/or obsession. The choice of Oscar Wilde as the privileged subject-suspect in such postmodern-postmortem representatives of life writing is then introduced as a set of hypotheses to be developed in the following steps of my own subversive metaphysical detective inquest. the link between such novels and metaphysical detective stories. It also explains its favouring of the term ‘biographical novel’ for the analysis and then switches to a more thematic approach, i.e. Recent Biofiction and Its (Dis)Contents.” The first part underscores that ‘biofiction’ as a relatively recent genre knows all kinds of alternative denominations that are as varied and contradictory as the depictions of Oscar Wilde in contemporary biofictions. biofiction and metaphysical detective stories – are first broached in the theoretical introduction, entitled “Preliminary Investigation. The two main concepts on which this research hinges – i.e. This doctoral thesis situates itself within a largely unexplored area of literature, for while much has been written on biofiction from a theoretical point of view, this has not been the case for its relationship to metaphysical detective stories, which forms the touchstone of this study. Robert Holloway, 1997), The Case of the Pederast’s Wife (Clare Elfman, 2000) and the first five The Oscar Wilde Murder Mysteries (Gyles Brandreth, 2007-present). investigates how Oscar Wilde’s life has been re-appropriated in recent fiction, more particularly in nine first-person biographical novels: The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde (Peter Ackroyd, 1983), The Coward Does It with a Kiss (Rohase Piercy, 1990), The Unauthorized Letters of Oscar Wilde (C.
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