| Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), is the advocate of aestheticism art movement, thefamous writer, poet, dramatist, and artist. During the period in the Oxford University,he was influenced by Walter Pater’s and John Ruskin’s aesthetic ideas, and learnednew Hegel’s philosophy, Darwin’s evolution theory and pre-Raphaelite works, and allthese established the direction for his career as an active aestheticism writer. His worksoccupy an important position in the history of world literature, and he is also one ofthe foreign writers who was first introduced to people in China’s new culturemovement.Oscar Wilde’s fairy tales spread more widely than his other works, which peoplecan find almost in every places children live. The Nightingale and The Rose is a simplestory. This moving story is composed by bright colors and simple plot which is filledwith deep love but a sad ending. Wilde pays attention to the aesthetic education insteadof moral dogma. As the only novel of Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray is acontroversial classic. This book has a magic tempting of corruption, and light and dark,good and evil, beautiful and ugly-these opposite images make sharp contrast and givereaders unique aesthetic experience. Oscar Wilde’s aesthetic idea is reflected in hiscareful description and collocation of color. Different from Wilde’s other dramas,Salome is a completely aesthetic experiment, with rich color and distinct layers. Theplay indicates his “art for art sake” aesthetic idea.Through analysis of these three texts, my thesis tries to find Wilde’s pattern oncolor application, and the effect of color images to his aesthetic experiment. The thesisconsists of five parts. Except for introduction and conclusion, the rest is the main bodywhich analyzes the application and the collocation of color image.Chapter one is the analysis of the color image in The Nightingale and The Rose.First part is the composition of the color images. Main colors of this fairy tale are redand white. Second part is the change of the colors. In the story the color of rose changes from light to deep, implying that love moves to maturity. The last part is thecontrast of color. Through handling the color, Oscar Wilde built a three dimensionalfairy tale kingdom.Chapter two is the analysis of color images in The Picture of Dorian Gray. Firstpart is the analysis of the color image construction, including the color of flowers, thecolor of human appearance, the color of smoke and fog, etc.. Second part is the changeof color images, including the change of cold color and warm color, the change ofcolor depth. The last part is the contrast of colors, including the contrast of light colorand dark color, the contrast of Europe color and exotic color. A very important point inthe novel is the dichotomy, just like the bright and the dark, the good and the evil, thebeauty and the ugliness. Extraordinary beauty comes from horror and grotesque.Chapter three is about color images in Salome, including black, red and white-three components of color images. Each of them matches along with Iokanaan, Salomeand the moon. Second part is the change of color images, including the change ofwarm color and cool color and the change of monochrome color and polychrome. Andthe first half of drama is the favor of cool color; the rest part tends to warm color. Lastpart is the contrast of color, including the contrast of simple and complex, the contrastof women’s color and men’s color. Men characters in the play are passive and the colorare solid and conventional while women characters are active and the color areenthusiasm and fluency.To sum up, through the analysis of color images in these three representativemasterpieces of Wilde’s fairy tales, novels and dramas, my thesis explores OscarWilde’s artistic features. We can better understand Oscar Wilde’s aestheticism and theconnotation of his works by reading text from a new angle. |
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