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56 | Arno Haldemann www.jrfm.eu 2018, 4/2, 55–66
INTRODUCTION
In their call for papers, the editors of this volume cite Oscar Wilde as they ask
a wide-reaching question: “Who, being loved, is poor?” For a postmodern his-
torian, this instantly and inevitably becomes a twofold question: what kind of
love did Wilde intend and why do the editors refer to it? As the call’s eponymous
question encompasses different temporal levels, the answer should be histori-
cally nuanced and socially differentiated. For this reason, I will focus on three
questions: (1) what does the question tell us about its famous originator, his
socialization, and the social field he was participating in, or, in other words, how
would Wilde have understood his own question? (2) what does the use of this
question tell us about the editors who refer to the famous playwright in their
call for papers for a contemporary scholarly journal and about those who per-
ceive the reference and answer it? While the first two questions will be explored
on a meta-theoretical level, I want to answer a third question on the basis of
empirical data from a case study from the canton of Bern. Notwithstanding its
peculiarities, in this article Bern represents a relatively arbitrarily selected place
at the centre of Europe during the transition from the 18th to the 19th cen-
tury. The majority of the populace in this city-state were agrarian and rural. So,
(3) how would actors in this society have answered Wilde’s question? In my re-
sponse to this third question, I hope to advance to the very core of this call for
papers. I will demonstrate the irrelevance of Wilde’s intentions in his question
for the audio-visual and material dimensions of the marriage rituals of Bern’s
agrarian majority in its transition from early modern times to modernity proper.
I will put forward the argument that certainly in this part of Europe, and likely
elsewhere too, a large part of the population would never have considered Wil-
de’s question. Perhaps, however, they would have asked the inverse question,
“Who, being poor, is loved?”, and, more fundamentally, “What is love?”1
THE BOURGEOIS BIAS OF ROMANTIC MARRIAGE
Wilde was the son of a renowned medical doctor who had been educated in the
humanities. His mother was an equally educated translator and poet who oper-
ated a well-known salon. He was descended from a quasi ideal-typical bourgeois
background.2 In his mother’s social circles the very young Wilde had contact
1 If the editors searched for a reference frame for this hypothetical question, for better or worse they
would have encountered Haddaway’s eponymous pop song. This reference would possibly not have
sat so easily in the academic and intellectual milieu of the editors as does the citation from Oscar Wilde,
but it would have more likely corresponded with the folk culture of the subaltern actors I investigate
in my study.
2 The term “bourgeois” is used here for want of a better translation of the German bürgerlich. The term
“bourgeois” denotes here a specific life style “with an emphasis on personal education and political
participation. As such, bĂĽrgerlich has a positively connoted discursive tradition and breadth of mean-
JRFM
Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 04/02
- Title
- JRFM
- Subtitle
- Journal Religion Film Media
- Volume
- 04/02
- Authors
- Christian Wessely
- Daria Pezzoli-Olgiati
- Editor
- Uni-Graz
- Publisher
- SchĂĽren Verlag GmbH
- Location
- Graz
- Date
- 2018
- Language
- English
- License
- CC BY-NC 4.0
- Size
- 14.8 x 21.0 cm
- Pages
- 135
- Categories
- Zeitschriften JRFM