On Aesthetical Orientation Of Oscar Wilde's Novels And Plays

Oscar Wilde, as the leader of the Aesthetic Movement in Britain in Nineteenth Century, has written different types of writing with a few publications in each type, but each of them bears some significance welcomed by the public. In the former period of writing he focuses on essays and fairy tales, later he turns into writing novels and plays. And his comedies bring him extraordinary fame. The dissertation makes a research on his aesthetical orientation presented by his fiction and drama.Based on the theories proposed by the former aesthetes, Oscar Wilde develops and forms his own aesthetic theories. The first chapter illustrates the initiation and development of the Aesthetic Movement, and analyzes the theories proposed by aesthetes in different periods, then concludes the theories of Oscar Wilde. The main purposes are to show the relations between the Oscar Wilde and his former aesthetes and to prepare the theories for the subsequent analyses.In the second chapter, materials employed in his fiction and drama are analyzed to see the aesthetical orientation of Oscar Wilde. We can find that there is no innovative material in his writings except for the usual and common one, such as murdering, revenge, Faust, Narcissus, etc. i.e."the beauty of simpleness". But Oscar Wilde uses his imagination, and the contrast and comparision of the sin and ugliness in his publications, and also the blankness to make the simple and common material attractive, which bears a different significance.Oscar Wilde attaches special importance on the form of writing. He maintains that,"Form is the beginning of things……. And form is everything."So, in the third chapter, forms used in his fiction and drama are studied. We can come to the conclusion that his aesthetic orientation in his writings is"the beauty of complicatedness". In order to make his writings complicated, Oscar Wilde makes use of flamboyant and musical language and complicated plots and suspense.In the forth chapter, characters are compared and contrasted. Oscar Wilde holds that the only real people are the people who never existed, so his characters in his writings demostrate"the beauty of purity", which accords with his main literary theory, i.e.,"the art is only art sake."We can get another theory"the characters are for characters sake". We can find that"dandy"is the main symbol of his male characters, while female characters have different types, such as traditional women, women with the past and the ideal women. Anyhow, Oscar Wilde gives his own expectation to those characters in his novels and plays.