A Marginal Narrative Study Of Oscar Wilde's The Ballad Of Reading Gaol

Oscar Wilde(1854-1900)is an English writer of aestheticism in the late 19 th century.His life is a mixture of both honor and disgrace.His talent brings him fame and honor in the former part of his life.However,in the latter part,he is put into prison due to “committing acts of gross indecency with other male persons”,leading him to the abyss of spiritual crisis.Different life experiences make his works differ in style.As a famous narrative poem of Wilde,The Ballad of Reading Gaol is created exactly after his release from jail.Taking death penalty of murderer “he” as its clue,the poem describes prisoners' unknown and miserable prison life,revealing the injustice and cruelty of the British Victorian legal system.The poem tells,from unique perspectives,both physical and spiritual torments suffered by prisoners,so as to highlight their marginalized identity.The early works of Wilde seem to be romantic and lively,but gloom and sombreness are still embedded there: the “happy prince” is not happy;the nightingale dies for love but ends in gutter.His later works release this gloom and sombreness out,turning his writing focus from criticizing upper class to the attention for marginal group.As a sociological term,“Marginal Man” initially refers to those mixed-race groups who live in different culture gaps.It later develops to cover people who are madmen,prisoners,sexual perversion and homosexual in today's society.As a primary feature of ballad,narrative is constructed in The Ballad of Reading Gaol through its background,time,development,climax and ending of the story.In this poem,narrative themes range from murder,penalty of hanging and death to homosexuality;and narrative perspectives switch in an overlapping manner from first person “I” to “we”narrative.Through “marginal narrative”,this poem makes paradox and contradiction unfold between “marginal self” and “mainstream”,“life” and “death”,“happiness” and “pain”,“love” and “hate”,“innocence” and “crime”,“fairness” and “unfairness”.By combing the theory of “marginal man”,this thesis constructs the term of “marginal narrative” and applies it to the analysis of this poem.It contains five chapters in total,of which chapter one is an introduction to domestic and foreign studies on this poem.Chapter two is about the theory of Marginality and the construction of “marginal narrative” which mainly includes marginal narrative contents,marginal narrative strategies and marginal narrative paradoxes.Chapter three discusses in detail about the marginal narrative contents in this poem which includes the analysis for marginal characters like murders,and marginalthemes such as crime,jail and death.Based on chapter three,chapter four explores its marginal narrative strategies: three narrative perspectives(the perspective of onlookers,perspective of victims and that of narrators)and three exiles in narration(the exile of directness,exile of exquisite language and that of grand narrative).Based on the former two chapters,chapter five analyzes the marginal paradoxes of different concepts embodied by Wilde through this poem.To sum up,this thesis employs “marginal narrative” to study marginal thematic elements,marginal characters and marginal narrative perspectives of this poem so as to better interpret what Wilde intends to covey by his identity as a marginal man.