Journey Of Identity Pursuit Beneath Multi-religious References

"The Sphinx," conceived in the1880s but published in1894, is the most representative poem of Oscar Wilde. In spite of that, for a long time, it is dismissed as an unsuccessful attempt at l ’art pour l’art with no deep meaning. A significant feature of this poem is its ubiquitous references to multi-religions. However, multi-religious references in this poem have been simply counted by critics among the stock-in-trade motifs in the late nineteenth century literature with the predilection for the grotesque, the monstrous and the gothic, and have been suppressed and misunderstood as the turgid and obscure decorations obstructing a direct approach to the poem. However, the thesis insists that the multi-religious reference is a key to solve the riddle of "The Sphinx." Based on this, starting with analysis of its ubiquitous multi-religious references, this thesis tries to reinterpret this poem in association with the social background and the poet’s experience with the help of the Lacanian psychoanalysis, especially his theory about "the three orders."Apart from introduction and conclusion, the thesis consists of three chapters. Chapter One probes into the narrator’s faith crisis, which is an implication of the narrator’s identity crisis, and a reason for the narrator’s identity pursuit. Chapter Two analyzes the narrator’s efforts at forming identity. The narrator tries to reconstruct his identity by his "Gaze" at the Sphinx, the reflected image and creating Ammon, his "ideal ego" in the imaginary. However, since he can only receive an illusionary satisfaction via meconnaissance, his efforts end with failure. Chapter Three is about the end of the narrator’s journey of identity pursuit. He wants to step into the symbolic,"the name of father", but cannot help wallowing in nostalgia for the imaginary. So that he is caught between the symbolic and the imaginary until his imaginary death brings him to the real, in which he achieves the "wholeness" of identity. It seems that the narrator has finished his journey successfully. However his success is based on an imaginary death. In the real life, his identity can only drop in the state of confusion, alienation and fragmentation.The thesis insists it is unfair to view "The Sphinx" as a sentimental twaddle. With the multi-religious references, the narrator’s journey of identity pursuit is unfolded before us, and which can also be regarded as Wilde’s psychological development.