Foss Publishes on Wilde and Disability

Professor Chris Foss published an article titled “‘For the future let those who come to play with me have no hearts’: The Affect of Pity in Oscar Wilde’s ‘The Birthday of the Infanta’” in the Fall 2017 number of Journal of Narrative Theory, a special issue on Dis/Enabling Narratives. Foss argues that Wilde’s fairy tale about the death of a performing Dwarf at the Spanish court may appear mired in damaging stereotype, but it suggests more progressive emotionally-based possibilities for sympathy, acceptance, and even identification rather than paternalistic pity.