On The Death Narrative In Oscar Wilde's Works

Death is an inevitable ending for our human beings in reality. Death is also an eternal theme , a frequenter in the eastern or western literary works. Generally, death impresses people with great agony as well as the feeling of fear. However, Oscar Wilde's works , with the impression of being sad but not depressing, enrich"beautiful sense"and"poetic quality". Thus this thesis mainly analyses the frequent death in Wilde's early works, especially in his fairy tales, novels and plays, so as to explain the rich connotations of death from the perspectives of aesthetics , Christianity as well as reality , and to explore the basic sources of death narrative contained in his works.Chapter I mainly focuses on introducing the social and cultural backgrounds against which Wilde created his works as well as the relationship between death and literature. It is easier and better for us to understand the role of death narrative in some of his works from the social, economic, cultural and moral backgrounds .Chapter II mainly presents different stories with death endings in Wilde's fairy tales, novels and plays such as the dedicated death including death for love and death for kindness; the reborn death ; as well as the accidental death , which mainly fucuses on the characters, actions, settings, events and plots related to death stories ,and on narrative discourses.Chapter III is primarily concerned with the rich connotations of three types of death from three aspects, i.e. Aesthetic connotation of death, Christian implication of death , as well as the practical significance of death reflecting the reality etc, so as to reveal Wilde's special death narrative.Chapter IV explores the basic sources of death narrative in Wilde's works. These sources focus on Victorian era as the social source; Wilde's family , personal belief and experience as the individual source; as well as the Dacadence as the theoretical basis–these are the main factors that caused Wilde's special death narrative in his works.The last chapter summarizes the transcendence of death in Wilde's works by analysing the artistic function of death as well as the moral function of death .By analysing and exploring the various death endings in Wilde's works, by combing out and concluding his style of death narrative, we can understand Oscar Wilde's works comprehensively and systematically.