This article reframes Oscar Wilde's letter from prison, De Profundis, now retitled Epistola: In Carcere et Vinculis, in light of ancient epistolary writings concerned with the ethical care of the self. I argue that Wilde's epistolary account of his 'spiritual experience' should be reinscribed in what Michel Foucault calls 'technologies of the self' and Pierre Hadot calls 'spiritual exercises' central to ancient philosophy. This genealogical reframing of Epistola has both ethical and aesthetic implications: on the one hand, it shows that the philosophical foundations of Epistola are rooted in ethical practices of 'care of the self', or souci de soi, which were central to Socratic, Epicurean and Stoic traditions and pave the way for Christian confessional practices; on the other hand, Wilde's aestheticisation of Christ as a spiritual but also artistic model to imitate turns the self into a work of art along lines that anticipate Foucault's late turn towards an aesthetics of existence. Once these two sides of are joined by reading Wilde avec Foucault, a new ethical and aesthetic picture of Epistola begins to take form.
Nidesh Lawtoo (Fri,) studied this question.