An Interpretation Of Dandies In Wilde's Comedies

In Oscar Wilde's four social comedies Lady Windermere 's Fan,The Ideal Husband,A Woman of No Importance and The Importance of Being Earnest,the fastidious and stylish dandies are welcomed by audiences.This thesis is designed to analyse five dandies among them,Lord Darlington,Lord Illingworth,Lord Goring,Algernon and Jack Worthing.The author will explore Wilde's scoff and satire to capitalist society and its hypocritical moral standard.As an aesthete,Oscar Wilde is deeply influenced by dandyism.This thesis will interpret the social and cultural meaning behind these five dandies.Firstly,through dandies' exaggerated narcissism and rebellious behaviors,Wilde creates these artistic images and shapes an ideal self to pursue beauty.Secondly,the core of dandies' idleness is actually Wilde's attack and criticism to the hypocritical morality and the existing bourgeois order at the Victorian age.Then this thesis will further explain Wilde's pure pursuit and insistence of beauty and art.He claimed conspicuously that "All art is immoral." and"Aesthetics is above ethics."This thesis includes five parts:Introduction mainly focuses on the background,meaning,originality and framework of this thesis.Chapter one is literature review,which introduces the domestic and foreign research on Oscar Wilde and his four comedies.Chapter two mainly analyses the historical origin and cultural contexts of dandy and dandyism,and concludes that Wilde,deeply influenced by dandish culture,inherits the characteristic of the dandyism.What's more,this part also introduces aestheticism and the later Aesthetic Movement,and explores the relationship between dandyism and aestheticism.Chapter three is the core part of this thesis,by analyzing the five dandies in the four comedies from their stylish dress esthetic,epigrammatic language feature and idle life attitude.This part will illustrate dandies' rebellious spirit against the capitalist society,and the profound social significance reflected by dandies.In the conclusion,Wilde struggled with the hypocritical upper class by shaping these dandies.