The Exotic Image In Wilde’s Works

Wilde is a classical writer in the European literary history, with a strong feeling of exotic travel. This paper aims to use imagology of comparative literature, to analysis the exotic image and the implication behind the images in his works, through Oscar Wilde’s experiences of living in America and other countries and the exotic images described in the text. The American image and Chinese image being the main body, this paper compares the differences of the Anglo-American cultural and Chinese cultural status in Victorian, and carefully combines the social collective imagination matter, in American culture and Chinese culture at that time, thus to find out the interaction between the collective imagination and works of Oscar Wilde, and its potential impact on the cultural diffusion in building the exotic image and literature image. In addition, with the help of Oscar Wilde’s unique creative talent and literary aestheticism, this paper makes further analysis of the author’s perception of the exotic image, and contemplates how Wilde narrates exotic as the other and how he reflects himself. It’s an important literary significance of Wilde to reflect self by the other, since he added his own creative imagination into the process of describing and constructing the other, which eventually makes the other to express self. And it is the very colorful exotic image which exhibits more comprehensive and multiple meanings in the works of Oscar Wilde.The thesis explores the generating background and the collective consciousness of social of the exotic image in Oscar Wilde works, and discusses the deformation of myself as the other from the generation roadmap of the exotic image, combined with analysis in the text, which contemplates the American image and the Chinese image of important and representative significance from the roots and the rheology. Although it’s inevitable to be subjective, this paper will be faithful to the original exotic image in the text as much as possible, and without excessive play. Through the eyes and words of Oscar Wilde, we can see the face of other countries from British perspective, as well as the images and status of China and America in the eyes of other countries, which is conducive for China and America to re-examine their own from a historical perspective, and highlights the special significance of this thesis.