
Untitled by Gordon Johnson (GDJ) via Pixabay
Monday, March 10, 5-7 pm, E003 room, Amiens Citadelle Campus
https://u-picardie-fr.zoom.us/s/98971699027
Drawing on recent ecocriticism, this talk will examine the image of the solitary male in conjunction with the floral imagery that accompanies him in Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890-91), particularly in the light of Michael Marder’s concept of ‘phytophallogocentrism’, which he uses to describe ‘how plants are involved in the twinning together of masculine sexuality with logos, and also in its deconstruction’ [The Philosopher’s Plant, 2014]. Ultimately, what will be revealed by the juxtaposition of floral and incel masculinities will be the futility inherent in both due to the interplay of Eros and Thanatos.
Dr Mathew Rickard is an ATER (Research and Teaching Fellow) in English Translation and Literature at the Université de Picardie Jules Verne in Amiens, France. His research focuses on decadent literature and its intersection with queer masculine and male identities and behaviours. He is interested more generally in transgression and gender studies, with a particular focus on masculinities and queer theory. His recent research project culminated in the publication of his monograph, /Against the Grain: The Poetics of Non-Normative Masculinity in Decadent French Literature/ in 2021, based on his PhD thesis which he defended in 2020. Given the links between French and British Decadent writing, he is now beginning to extend this research in an anglophone and transnational context, comparing 19th century literature with that of the 20th and 21st centuries. His nascent research seeks to understand the figure of the incel and toxic masculinity in the writings of decadent authors such as Jean Lorrain, Joris-Karl Huysmans, and Oscar Wilde.