Today was an interesting day for presentations in class, as we looked at Salome by Oscar Wilde. I had never before encountered the text until this course. What first struck me was how abstract the illustrations appeared, as opposed to the illustrations Sidney Paget created for "The Man With the Twisted Lip"; whereas those were life-like, Beardsley's illustrations seemed far more interpretive.

The sexual dynamics of Salome and its accompanying illustration was a main theme across all our discussions this week. More specifically, female sexuality as dominating was discussed in a few of the presentations. Visually, we see this dynamic in Beardsley’s illustration through the Salome being positioned higher than male characters in the same illustration. This was something I noticed as I was analyzing “The Eyes of Herod” for my Research Question assignment, but it was fascinating to notice that this is a common motif throughout the illustrations.

From all the Victorian texts that I’ve read thus far for this class, I felt as if Beardsley’s drawings for Oscar Wilde’s Salomé were unlike any other. Perhaps it is because our class material was mainly focused on the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood’s sensuous imagery and vividly-etched out woodcuts, but Beardsley’s sporadic and fluid art nouveau lines were incredibly shocking in comparison.

This discussion this week surrounding Oscar Wilde’s Salome: A Tragedy in One Act and the illustrations made by Aubrey Beardsley was really interesting. Beardsley’s illustrations were so different from the ones we have looked at in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and A Christmas Carol.

I haven't really encountered Salome often or if I did, then it’s usually in brief passing (like I know the name and that’s generally it). But with today’s discussion seminar I was able to actually see the ways in which sexuality and queer culture really impacted the story and its reception to the audience.

I really enjoyed our discussion on Oscar Wilde's Salome: Tragedy in One Act. While the book was censored in 1892 due to Aubrey Beardsley's nude illustrations, I found it quite surprising that the book was uncensored in 1907 to a conservative twentieth-century audience. Beardsley's illustrations were unlike any of the artwork we have studied thus far in term and that made it especially interesting, One, it was quite interesting to learn that Wilde himself did not like many of Beardsley's illustrations.

Oscar Wilde’s Salome: A Tragedy in One Act, illustrated by Aubrey Beardsley was censored when it was first published in French in 1892.  It wasn’t until 1907 that it was republished with all the illustrations now uncensored.  Because of the nudity and sexuality depicted in the illustrations, the play was viewed as inappropriate during the fin de siècle.  Now, we know Salome to be progressive; a work that was ahead of its time and provided great commentary on female sexuality and the male gaze.  Beardsl

For this week's work on Salome I was tasked with presenting my discussion leading question to the class. The process of researching that discussion question posed a number of interesting challenges and opportunities to research the text in greater depth. The process of taking a single image and analyzing it in depth and in a way it can be communicated to the rest of the class in the form of productive discussion was difficult but the practice we have accumulated over our time in this course made the process much easier.