From John Keats To Oscar Wilde

This paper aims at analyzing the aestheticism in Keats’poems and Wilde’s fairy tales.Keats was one of the greatest British Romantic poets in early nineteenth century who loved beauty and sang for beauty. Keats’poems pursue beauty and pure art which embodies his ideal of "Art for Art’s Sake". Thus, Keats is regarded as one of the pioneers of aestheticism. The first chapter of this thesis focuses on the aestheticism in Keats poems in the following two aspects:firstly,"beauty doesn’t equal to truth". Throughout his life, Keats had the aesthetic fear of beauty doesn’t equal to truth. As to this aspect, his poems embody mythic beauty, dreamy beauty, and the beauty of pathos. Secondly,"beauty equals to truth". As to this aspect, Keats held that the sense of beauty should rise to a height that the beauty existed as reality. This truth did not refer to the reality of the real world but referred to sincerity and art. Hence, Keats’poems express the beauty of truth and rationality, the beauty of soul, the beauty of artistic form and so on, among which, the beauty of artistic form is the highest kind. From the above, we can see that Keats’poems reflect aestheticism in many respects. Such a pure poet is rarely seen in the history of British Literature whose achievements are comparable with Wilde.Wilde was one of representatives of the Aesthetic movement in the late19th century who spent a lifetime pursuing "Art for Art’s Sake". Lots of writing forms has been employed by Wilde to express his pursue for beauty in his short career of creation, among which, fairy tales were the most ideal carrier. In Wilde’s fairy tales, aestheticism is expressed incisively and vividly. Though the separation is nearly a century between Wilde and Keats, they have the same art identify. Regarded Keats as the pioneer of Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Wilde praised Keats for many times aiming to wake people’s concern and love in Keats’s aesthetics. Besides, there are a lot of similarities between Wilde and Keats. Thus, the second chapter mainly analyzes how Wilde inherits Keats aestheticism to find the similarities between them. Moreover, as the master of aestheticism. Wilde developed and innovated aestheticism and formed his own theory, such as "artistic independence, life imitates art. art criticism, form is everything, etc." For this reason, there are also difference between his and Keats’poems. Thus, the third chapter will analyze how Wilde developed and innovated Keats’aestheticism to explore the difference between Wilde’s fairy tales and Keats’poems.By exploring the aesthetics thoughts in Keats poems, the thesis tries to analyze how Wilde inherited, developed and innovated aestheticism in his fairy tales in order to clearly reveal the developmental trajectory of aestheticism.