For Oscar Wilde Italy remained above all a landscape of the imagination. This illustrated talk will look at the role Italy played in Wilde’s life and artistic output, from his student days until his self-imposed continental exile. Attention will be paid to Wilde’s poetry on Italy and Italian themes, his shifting views of the Risorgimento, his revenge drama, The Duchess of Padua, and the play still in manuscript at the time of his death, A Florentine Tragedy, which Prof Kaplan has recently produced at Florence’s Palazzo Davanzati.

Joel Kaplan is former Chair of the Department of Theatre Arts at the University of Birmingham (UK) and Founder Director of that University’s Postgraduate Centre for the Study of Drama. His publications include Theatre and Fashion: Oscar Wilde to the Suffragettes (Cambridge University Press) and Look Back in Pleasure: Noel Coward Reconsidered (Methuen) both with Sheila Stowell.