The Paradox Of The United States

Oscar Wilde once called himself 'the artistic and cultural symbol of my age'. Passed away in 1900, the representative of aesthetics did offer us texts of rich symbols. It is bewildering of the complexity that Wilde conveyed in his works as well as his life. A hundred year after his death, more and more elements of 'modernity' began to be found in his works. This thesis will, from the angle of text, comb wilde's aesthetic thoughts and his writing practice and lay stress on the complexity in his writings. On this base, I will further discuss the form of the ambiguity both in his works and his personal life and also will think over how his complexity reflects the modern culture by placing his artistic personality in the entire developing process of aesthetic trend and by relating his 'revival' in 1990s. Chapter I: New aesthetic conception and writing practiceWhile the year of 1890 is generally considered as a watershed of Wilde's writing, the contradiction, complexity and variety of his works can never be interpreted by simple division. The core of his art is the independence of art. Life, nature and moral are by no means the art pursues. The integrity of art lies in itself instead of in the outside world. So art can not be judged by any outside standard. Wilde considers that art works should contain rich glamour and imagination. The most distinctive feature going through his entire writing life and relating all his works is an ambiguous style: specious language absurdity, expansionary and subverting structure, multi-faceted characters. His language of absurdity has eliminating power, by which the boundary of truth and fake, virtue and evil, wisdom and stupidity are eliminated. His structure always has the subversion that de-structured itself and give his works the tension of multiple interpretation. And he also created a lot of double faceted, even multi-faceted characters and his attitude added the ambiguity. Chapter II: the double images of the text and the personIn addition to the vague effect that he revealed in his language, structure and characters, Oscar Wilde himself and the connotation in his works seemed to be in vague and flexible. Bora in Ireland, faming in England and discredited in London, Wilde confirmed the great British cultural tradition and meanwhile is a typical Irish for his personality. Through the British Dandy, the inverted character image and relations, Oscar achieved a balance on his bewilderment and anxiety of the cultural recognizing. His life-long Catholic liability endowed his works with a certain mystery and his happy spirit derived from the Greek spirit. With the double influence of religion and Greek Spirit, his works contains the conflicting of restriction and indulgence. His imagemixed with profundity and levity is even more puzzling, which George Woodcock called the combination of "aesthetic clown" and "profound thinker". And Wilde had deep interest in such things like fiction, lies, disguise and mask. Chapter III: the revival of avant-gardeWilde's extreme insist of aesthetics, his reveal of language's decision power and his subversion to the ordinary thinking mode comprised a kind of 'modernity' of him. All the contradictions in his art and life course not only revealed the late 19th century Victorian society but predicted the at-a-loss state of modern society. His individualism and his Utopian idealism entirely violate the basic value conception and principle. As the epitomist of British aesthetics, although he sought perceptional support from French predecessors but, on a certain extent, he subverted even those heritage. His highly trust on language, his deliberate ambiguity and contradiction of his works and his meticulously created image of actor reflected the uncertainty of modern lives. Aesthetics is a practice of art in the process that aesthetic modernity challenges regime modernity. But no matter perception confronts ration, art surpassed religion or individual challenges the society, while trying to solve the absurdity of modernity, Oscar Wilde and aesthetics i...