| This thesis makes use of grotesque aesthetics to analyze the particular beauty that is displayed in Oscar Wilde's novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. Bakhtin considered the grotesque as the most important aspect of the aesthetics of clown in carnival theory. Thus from this particular aesthetic angle, artists can discover an ultimate beauty on the basis of the perceptual cognition of the verging figure and metamorphosis. This kind of beauty is closely linked to its inner sublime quality beyond the traditional beauty. Wilde was just the outstanding representative of this delicate beauty in the movement of Aestheticism. His aesthetic views were related to the dilemma of his existence and he always searched for his orientation in identity crisis; his mind guided him to seek a new way to realize himself. At that time, Aestheticism provided him with a kind of noblest existential space. So the beauty that was reflected in his writings, brought about an emotional excursion or even the metamorphosis of images in the life of the characters, and it was possessed of a kind of characteristics of sublimity in ideological level. In consideration of aesthetic views, it is hard to keep morality in a subordinate status. So Wilde tried his best to make the obvious morality dependent on the effects of art and drama. He wanted to show the perfect art through morality which was only treated as the artistic materials in The Picture of Dorian Gray. He thought the moral was that, all excess as well as all renunciation, brought its own punishment; that is to say, only the harmonious unity of soul and body can realize the perfect beauty of art. No matter what the excess or the renunciation is, it influences the construction of self, and the mind guides the self to keep a certain refreshing ones in change. Self is not immortal, but to be punished by death and destruction in a higher level. Keeping self means to ruin self. In Wilde's novel, the word "picture" has different meanings, it not only refers to Wilde's works The Picture of Dorian Gray, or Dorian's portrait in the story, but also suggests Wilde's life which rehearses his art. In the story, Wilde's individual image is transferred from "he" to "they", which made the image of "self multiplied and extended the moral of self-value, from which Wilde saw the grotesque essence between illusion and disillusion. From the structure of dramatic identity of self-metamorphosis and ultimate intention of self-understanding, Wilde upgraded his beauty of art for the art's sake, and made it surpass the classic beauty which was originated from the nature and the life. It is a delicate beauty—the union of the grotesque and the sublime, through which Wilde... |
