Dynamics of Aestheticism in Oscar Wilde’s The Happy Prince.doc

毕 业 设 计（论 文）题 目 契合与冲突：唯美主义和 《快乐王子 》 作 者 系 别 外国语学院 专 业 英 语 学 号 指导老师 Dynamics of Aestheticism in Oscar Wilde’s The Happy PrinceA Thesis Submitted to School of Foreign StudiesHunan In Partial Fulfillment of The Requirements forThe Degree of Bachelor of ArtsBy***AcknowledgmentsThis paper is developed from my study on Oscar Wilde’s aestheticism and his The Happy Prince.Many people did me favors in completing this research. Firstly, special thanks go to Ms Ling, supervisor of this paper as well as a respectable teacher in the School of Foreign Studies, Hunan University of Science and Technology, Secondly, thanks go to all the university leaders and teachers as well as my classmates. All of them helped me in getting some ideas to start and complete this paper.Lastly, thanks go to all the school librarians, who have done very much in supplying us with reference books, as well as to those whose works have been quoted by me in the paper.Abstract Fairy tales are thought to be the ideal carrier of Oscar Wilde’s aestheticism due to a shared reverence for beauty. In his fairy tales, Wilde uses poetic language to create imaginary world and express his pursuit of beauty. But there are also some paradoxical features between the fairy tales and Wilde’s main aesthetic theories. Aestheticism holds the belief of art for art’s sake. Accordingly, Wilde always declares art should not be judged by a moral standard, but in fact no literature work can be divorced from that completely. There is no exception for his fairy tales. Taking The Happy Prince as an example, this paper sets out to illustrate how Wilde’s aestheticism works in practice. Discussing both correspondences and paradoxes, it still tries to explore how the paradoxes arise. If doing so,Wilde’s aestheticism and his fairy tales can be better understood. Key words: Oscar Wilde; aestheticism; correspondance; paradoxes;