Bewilderments of Vision

According to Oscar Wilde, the primary aim of the critic is to see the object as in itself it really is not'. Through a series of close and often unusual readings, this book endeavours to develop Wilde's remark into a detailed and creative theory of reading. Or perhaps that should be misreading: for, as this experimental work of criticism negotiates its way among the works of a number of late-nineteenth-century writers, particularly Robert Louis Stevenson and Wilde himself, Tearle uncovers some o