| Oscar Wilde(1854-1900),the British playwright,novelist,fairy tale writer,poet and literary theorist of nineteenth Century,is a representative of British Aestheticism and the pioneer of the Decadent Movement.The Picture of Dorian Gray(1891),one of the representative works of Wilde,is the only novel written by him in his lifetime.Academic world has mixed opinions on this novel,and their views are different sharply.For example,some people hold the view that it is "a poisonous book".However,Conan Doyle,the writer contemporary with Wilde,confirms that it is a book of high morals.The Picture of Dorian Gray contains a lot of content of psychology,such as the imagoes in this novel,Dorian's old classroom,the artist's garden,the picture and all kinds of flowers,etc.These all have rich symbolic metaphorical meanings and the value of psychological analysis;the novel contain the content of Dorian Gray's narcissism,split personality,personality mask and other issues,and take them into psychological analysis.There are also many psychological terms in the novel,such as "the instinctive impulse","free will","desire","self-psychology",etc.In addition,Wilde's Mirror Theory,the literary theory of the Mask,are also related to some psychological problems.In the letter of Wilde,he had talked about the relationship between him and the characters he created in his books,and there are also a lot of spaces in his works.All of these leave us great space to analyze The Picture of Dorian Gray,especially the protagonist,Dorian Gray.This thesis will use Freud's theory of psychoanalysis to analyze this novel,and discuss the creative motivation of The Picture of Dorian Gray and the modernity of the novel.The thesis is divided into three parts:the introduction,the body and the conclusion,and body contains four chapters.The introduction consists of a brief introduction of Wilde and the novel The Picture of Dorian Gray.In this part,the author of this thesis also puts forward the research problems,summarizes the present research situation of it,and clarifies the research significance and research methods of the thesis.The definitions of some key terms in Freud's psychoanalytic criticism are also given in the conclusion.Through the investigation,the author of the thesis has found that the domestic and the overseas scholars have used the criticism of aestheticism,social historicism,feminism,gender poetics,queer theory,psychoanalysis,ethical literary theory,the theory of evolution and other critical methods to study the novel,and the rich study accomplishments include the analysis of Wilde's creative psychology,the theme of the novel,the characters in the novel,its artistic features,and so on.However,there are still some deficiencies.For example,Chinese scholars who have used psychoanalysis to study the novel mainly focused on the use of Freud's "three personality theory" interpretation of the characters in the novel,or simply made comparisons between Wilde and the main characters in the novel,or use Lacan's Theory of Mirror Image to analyze the "portrait" in the novel,or use Carl Jung's Theory of Collective Unconsciousness to analyze the characters in the novel,etc.,all of which are lack of depth.Moreover,what has not been profoundly studied are the psychological problems in the novel,especially the deep psychological problems of the protagonist Dorian Gray,and the social and personal creative motivations of it.And the journals on which those papers were published are lack of academic authority.Therefore,this thesis will use the theories of psychoanalysis,aestheticism,and text criticism to criticize the character Dorian Gray and studies its social and personal creative motivation,as well as further explores the modernity of the novel.The first chapter studies Dorian Gray's narcissistic libido abnormality through analyzing the cause of his libido abnormality and specific performance of his narcissistic complex.Absence of love,including the lack of his mother's love and the indifference and hostility of his grandfather,is the main reason why Dorian Gray has a morbid personality.Meanwhile by the guidance of Lord Henry and the inspiration of the picture,Dorian Gray's narcissistic consciousness arouses and he builds a self-important fantasy.He promises forever young,and let the picture bear the sin.The second chapter mainly analyzes the split personality of Dorian Gray.Firstly,the author of this thesis will analyze the different "self" in different circumstance and different period of Dorian Gray as well as his bisexual personality.Then,analyze the conflict between the "ternary personality" and the "self ' of Dorian Gray which mainly manifested in the super-ego---the moral bound that represented by Bezel,and the id--the hedonism that represented by Lord Henry Wotton.The third chapter is the analysis of Dorian Gray's unusually strong "death instinct".Dorian Gray's aggressive personality and the orientation of destroying himself are the manifestation of his death instinct.His aggressive personality contain the deformity of Dorian's conquest and destruction,the psychological defense mechanism of aggression,extreme fear,and the performance of Dorian's self-destructive tendencies contains the self-hatred and hostility and self-destruction.The fourth chapter discusses the creative motivation of The Picture of Dorian Gray.Analysis from Wilde's social and personal reasons.Social reasons include the psychological background of Wilde's time,the main social psychological problems during Victorian and the British aestheticism literature creation to the psychological analysis.Personal reasons include Wilde's experience and the relationship between Wilde's literary theory and novel writing.A research of the theme of psychology close links with his view of literature and art in Wilde's novels.In the conclusion part,the thesis discusses the modernity of Oscar Wilde's novels and analyses the modern psychological novel characteristics of The Picture of Dorian Gray.Meanwhile,it explores the modern literary techniques in Oscar Wild's creation,for instance,metaphor and symbol,fantasy and psychological analysis,association and blank-leaving,etc.This thesis discusses the superior consciousness and modernity of Oscar Wilde's novels. |
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