Research Of Comparation About Ryunosuke Akutagawa’ Works And Oscar Wilde’s Works

Ryunosuke Akutagawa (1892~1927) was one of the most representative writers inJapanese modern literary history, he was a weighty leader of “New Currents of Thought”.During his short life of only36years, he wrote more than140novels, a number of essays,reviews, travel notes, and poetries. His works cover a wide range of subjects andprofound meaning, they are rich in content while concise in language. RyunosukeAkutagawa earned a reputation of “Genius". Akutagawa has a profound effect to theJapanese, even the world’s literary circles. Japan set up the “Akutagawa Award” after hisdeath, which is the one of Japan’s top literary award. And the “Kappa Fiesta” was namedafter his book “Kappa”, this fiesta became a memorial date for his readers to remind him.Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) is the aestheticism movement leader at the end of the19thcentury in UK, he is a gifted writer and artist, an implementer of "life artistry" theory, ahungry hunter for beauty and love, and a controversial focused figure. Over his46yearsof life, he had a large amount of works which earned a historic recognition by its superbartistry, art theory, and advanced insight. Those words in his works were magnificent,beautiful, smooth and moving, full of elegant humor and irony, they were absolutelyfantastic.With a comparative study of the two writers’ works, we can find the similarities anddissimilarities of them. What we can see is the common grounds of these two masterswho were oceans apart and in different social environment and cultural atmosphere. Thecomparative study on them has significant meaning on analyzing eastern and westernculture development trends and inspecting their relationship in a dialectical view.This paper has four parts to probe into these two writers’ works. The first part, asummarized analysis comparison was made on their works’ content and connotation.First of all, about social satire, through the comparison of “Kappa" and “The Importanceof Being Earnest” the paper shows the strength of their intensity of concern on socialissues and people’s livelihood; Secondly, the paper turns into human nature analysis,which is the emphasis of both Oscar Wilde and Akutagawa. In this part, the paper offers arespectively summary in the beginning, and then describes in detail from self-interest and self-criticism sight; the former one takes " Rashomon "and" In a Grove " to contrast with" The Ballad of Reading Gaol ", the latter part compares " Fool’s Life " with “DeProfundis” to discuss how these two writers transformed from criticizing the evil inhuman nature into self-criticism. Finally, about the self-salvation, this paper selectsAkutagawa’s "holy fools" series, to compare with Wilde’s fairy tales series, through theseromantic ideal works, the paper researches the two masters’ effort in constructing an idealworld, and realizing their self-salvation by literature.The second part, by using paired comparison, it introduce the life experiences andsocial backgrounds of Akutagawa and Wilde to analyze how external environment impacton their writing style and skills formation, and then through the comparison of “Thegeneral " and " An Ideal Husband ", it analyzes the writing features of two writers on thesatire and humor.The third part analyzes the aesthetic consciousness in the works. The articles“Absorbed in writing popular novels " and " Hell Screen " are chosen to descantAkutagawa’s Art Supremacism;“The Picture of Dorian Gray” was selected to representWilde’s aestheticism, and then the paper inspects their internal cause on proposition.The fourth part explores how Oscar Wilde’ literature impacts on Akutagawa’sworks.Their masterpieces spread in the world with their unique styles and profoundthoughts, they are still be loved by readers even after more than a century. The commonpoints and differences in Akutagawa and Wilde’s works, especially their consistency inliterary concepts, will certainly attract the attention of posterity. On a background wheneastern and western literature come into a more harmony and smooth communicationstage, the world becomes restless and eager nowadays. The concept is worth ponderingwhich advocated by Akutagawa and Oscar Wilde with saying that art is beyond livingwhile living is for art.