Brazilian Style Salomania: Mythology and Pathology in the Light of a New Century

Abstract

This study examines a selection of references made by the Brazilian periodical press to Oscar Wilde’s (1854-1900) Salomé (1893) during the first half of the twentieth century. Its aim is to show how the media and the culture of the Belle Époque were marked by conflicting responses to the writer and his work—at times construing them as prolific mythologies contributing to a new conception of modernity, at other times as psychopathologies expressive of a moral degeneration supposedly intrinsic to this same modernity. The study thus elucidates how the press of this period frequently mobilised Wilde and Salomé as discursive instruments in the service of its own interests, often appropriating them to articulate programmes and positions in relation to contemporary political life. This research draws primarily on materials currently held in the Digital Archives of the National Library of Rio de Janeiro and forms part of the investigations conducted by the author with the support of the São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP).