The Truth Of Aestheticism

Oscar Wilde is a controversial figure all the time, whose strange costumes and brilliant language attracts people's great attention no matter at his age or now. People never stop researching him. There is no doubt that Oscar Wilde is an outstanding aesthete as well as a unique one. In the tide of aestheticism he didn't swim with the stream but dared to develop his own way of life. He produced and explained the aestheticism in his own method; at the same time he employed the theory of aestheticism to lash the false moral system of upper-class of Britain. Oscar Wilde opposed to measure the quality of art with traditional moral standards, paid more attention to the self-development, advocated that artists should create a perfect realm of art and life with a gifted imagination. He put the idea into practice, and based on this he put forward the mask theory.The proposition and application of this theory made him stand out of the crowd, and achieve the great success that almost nobody could compare. So far the research on Oscar Wilde has never stopped home and abroad, of which most of the researches are about the analysis of Wilde's aesthetics thought and literature works, while only few researcher conducted research on mask theory. There is no special treatise for reference.Therefore, this thesis tries to conduct a tentative research on Wilde's mask theory. Through studying the mask theory of Oscar Wilde this thesis attempts to discover the truth behind the mask. This paper contains five chapters. The first chapter introduces the characteristics of Victorian Age; the second chapter makes a further study of the causes of mask theory, thereby it helps readers to make a better interpretation of Oscar Wilde; the third chapter gives a detailed description of the mask theory and its connotation. The emergence of everything has its root, there is no exception in mask theory; in the fourth chapter, the writer points out that the proposing and practice of mask theory not only prevents him from being harmed but also helps him to achieve his dream in aestheticism. The conclusion part explicitly exposes the truth behind the mask. To some extent it gives the chance that this thesis will be of some value to the upcoming research. Through writing this thesis the author exposes the truth behind Oscar Wilde's mask theory.