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James’s “The Figure in the Carpet” (1896) can be read as a response to Oscar Wilde’s The Portrait of Mr. W. H. (1889). Both are uncannily similar in plot and theme; both represent literary criticism as a communal, homosocial, obsessive activity and pile up a surprising number of dead bodies. In this article I argue that Wilde and James explore central questions about authorship through these works on literary critics and through a shared investment in Shakespeare. James’s short story, “The Birthplace” (1903) and his preface to The Tempest (1907) reveal a conflict between his devotion to an autonomous artwork and his desire for an all-masterful artist. Reading these works in conjunction with New Critics’ Wimsatt and Beardsley’s positing of the intentional fallacy can help us understand the apparent paradoxes in James’s relationship to Shakespeare.

Theory to Die for: Lunging at the Arras in Wilde’s The Portrait of Mr. W. H. and James’s “The Figure in the Carpet”