On"Sphinx Factor"and Literary Teaching

Human is a kind of existence of "Sphinx factor", which includes human factor and animal factor, influencing human on the choice of being, ethics, science and technology. The original purpose of literature is for advocating ethic and morality. Both oriental and occidental literature regards self-realization as a bounden responsibility. It has provided a large amount of examples about rational will’s control of free will in literary works since ancient Greek, narrating with different languages that human is a kind of existence of "Sphinx factor". As a beautiful poetry of human childhood, ancient mythology seems to be a child of human beings which is composed of "Sphinx factor" but it hasn’t accomplished ethical election in order to achieve ethical consciousness in childhood, expressing character’s nature in literary works. From medieval times to20century, it emerges obvious view of good and evil with "Sphinx factor" combined and transformed differently in literature that mainly prefers to control animal factors with human factors, making character’s behavior ethical.Taking "Sphinx factor" as the starting point, this thesis tries to study the four western classic works-William Wilson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Picture of Dorian Gray and ⅡVisconte Dimezzato. Through analyzing characters’"Sphinx factor", this thesis discusses different combination and transformation between human factor and animal factor in order to expound the complex relationship among rational, free and irrational will, providing a new perspective for us to understand the above works. The main body of the thesis is made up of three chapters:Chapter one makes a dynastic historical analysis of "Sphinx factor" in western literary works since ancient Greek, with four texts as the starting point. There are great relevance and formal similarity in William Wilson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Picture of Dorian Gray and ⅡVisconte Dimezzato, each of which externalizes human factor and animal factor into two different images, being better to touch the soul and cause introspection with exaggerating and amplifying the coexistence and confliction of human factor and animal factor compared with other literary works. Chapter Two mainly expound how the four works use unique literary forms to describe human as a kind of existence of "Sphinx factor". That is to say, with diagrams, these works externalize human factor and animal factor into two different images, through dialogues, rupture and merging of which the conflict and struggle between human factor and animal factor. On the cases of the four works, Chapter Three this thesis explores works’ethical teaching significance, i.e. animal factor occurs with human factor in human of ethical existence, though torment human, is a contrary experience which promotes human to pursue happy things. Human should control free will with rational will so as to hold moral commanding height, highlighting the advantages. The last part of dissertation analyzes different combination of "Sphinx factor" on children and adults, as well as characters’different destinies resulted from combination and contest between human factor and animal factor on adults with mature ethical consciousness.