| Oscar Wilde, a genius and most disputable writer at the late Victorian age, due to the age's severe ethics and social system, plus the writer's own marginalized experience, could only practice his aesthetic maintenances at the margin of the society, reaching his personal carnival on his own. In his artistic practice, Wilde takes the forms of grotesque and comedy, liberating his readers or audiences from fixed habits and logic, and gradually revealing those social ills. In his works, truth and feint, reason and fantasy, meaning and nonsense, all are combined together, which succeeded in a multi-level's carnival. With the application of Bakhtin's carnival theory to Wilde's works, it could be easier to understand Wilde's personal experience at the age and his obvious rebellion of the authority.This paper aims at excavating the carnivalization in Oscar Wilde's artistic creation, especially from the following four aspects:Taking "carnival" as the clue, the first chapter analyzes the three prosperous periods of "Dionysus Spirit" in Western literary history. The ancient Greek period could be considered as the first flowering period of Dionysus spirit, with the ancient Greek drama, especially tragedies as the representative. In the Renaissance period, as the result of the raise of human position and dignity, carnival flourished again, and the carnivalized life became another life which liberated people from the restrictions of religion, from the absolute reign of God. Bakhtin believed that carnival in the Renaissance period is not only the carnival of literature and arts, but also the carnival of life, with William Shakespeare as the most typical one. After the oppression of rationalist of the 17th and 18th centuries, and along with the rise of irrationalism philosophies and "Dionysus Spirit" as the representative at the late 19th century, carnival realized its third recovery.Chapter two discusses the historical background of the late Victorian period and Oscar Wilde's personal experience, to prove that it is totally possible that carnival could flourish again at the late 19th century with Oscar Wilde as the forerunner. At the late Victorian period, there were a lot of scientific achievements and philosophical trends, which again put religion and rationality into the position of being doubted. Also because of prevalent despair about the social condition, people could only retreat to the irrational state reflected by "Dionysus Spirit" to get rid of the unbearable life. At the same time, the Aesthetic Movement was popular at that time, which advocated a kind of aesthetic and morally-freed life. Oscar Wilde, an Irish writer in English upper class, a homosexual in Victorian period, could only compromise his behavior under the mask of an aesthetic pursuit, realizing his own carnival; his artistic practice embodied his idea of carnivalization.In the following two chapters, the present thesis analyzes those carnival factors as presented in Wilde's works, especially in his only novel The Picture of Dorian Gray and the well-known play The Importance of Being Ernest. It is believed that Wilde's artistic works are the embodiments of his ideas, and through a detailed analysis, the carnivalization of his works is self-evident, which further proves that Oscar Wilde could be considered as the forerunner of carnival literature in modern times.As a kind of culture study, this paper hopes to open a new perspective to Oscar Wilde as well as his works. |
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