Thesis (M.A.)--Villanova University, 2009. / English Dept. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1975. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Bibliography: leaves 315-328.

Submitted by LIVIA MARIA ZOCCA null (livia_zocca@yahoo.com.br) on 2017-06-16T00:59:02Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertação Livia. Versão 9.pdf: 2060001 bytes, checksum: 78c55dcf08f0cc7e9a988db3a155396e (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Luiz Galeffi (luizgaleffi@gmail.com) on 2017-06-19T14:22:24Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 zocca_lm_me_arafcl.pdf: 2060001 bytes, checksum: 78c55dcf08f0cc7e9a988db3a155396e (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-06-19T14:22:24Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 zocca_lm_me_arafcl.pdf: 2060001 bytes, checksum: 78c55dcf08f0cc7e9a988db3a155396e (MD5) Previous issue date: 2017-05-26 / Os estudos comparativos entre literatura e outras artes distintas têm contribuído desde a Antiguidade para maior compreensão de obras, propiciando - concomitantemente à compreensão do objeto literário - o aumento de pesquisas e discussões. O mito bíblico de Salomé foi fortemente retomado na França do fim século XIX e, adquirindo novas e diferentes roupagens do mito original, percorreu o imaginário dos artistas do período através das famosas pinturas de Gustave Moreau, tornando-se um forte símbolo feminino de uma época marcada pelo simbolismo /decadentismo, onde a arte buscava explorar as paixões e os mistérios, em meio aos grandes avanços científicos. Oscar Wilde foi um dos escritores que deu voz à dançarina, construindo em francês mais uma versão entre as muitas variações do mito ao publicar sua peça em 1893. Sua Salomé percorreu a Europa em meio a polêmicas e obteve mais sucesso que as outras obras de mesmo tema – e melhores avaliadas pela crítica do período - dando à personagem maior destaque e repercussão. Encantado com a peça de Wilde, Aubrey Beardsley, em 1894, ilustra a versão inglesa com seu estilo característico - variando da Art Noveau à influência das pinturas japonesas - em um tom erótico e grotesco peculiar. Suas ilustrações correram o mundo com a peça e trouxeram ainda mais notoriedade e significado à versão wildeana, o que permite pensar que o elemento pictórico poderia ultrapassar suas funções tradicionais de simples acompanhante do texto, acrescentando informações à trama, ao preencher lacunas e sugerir novos olhares, ampliando a leitura. Assim, entendendo que o texto verbal e visual não são linguagens incomunicáveis, e sim complementares, e que se isoladas as obras teriam seus significados e sentidos alterados, o presente trabalho busca analisar as relações texto-imagem entre a peça de Wilde e as ilustrações de Beardsley. / Comparative studies between literature and other distinct arts have contributed since the ancient times to a better understanding of art pieces, providing – simultaneously to the understanding of the literary field – an increase in researches and discussions. The biblical myth of Salomé was highly restored in France late in the 19th century and, by featuring a new and different appearance from the original one, covered the imagination of artists from that period through Gustave Moreau’s famous paintings, becoming a powerful female symbol of a time marked by the Symbolism/ Decadentism, when art aimed to explore passions and mysteries among the great scientific advances. Oscar Wilde was one of the writers who gave voice to the dancer, building another version of the myth among several ones by publishing his play in 1893. His Salomé roamed Europe in the middle of controversies and obtained more success than the other pieces about the same theme - and the ones that received the best evaluations of that time - what gave the character a greater focus and impact. Amazed by Wilde’s play, Aubrey Beardsley, in 1894, illustrates the British version with his typical style – ranging from the Art Nouveau to the influence of Japanese paintings – in a peculiar erotic and grotesque shade. His illustrations roamed the world with the play and brought even more visibility and meaning to Wilde’s version, which enables to assume that the pictorial element could overcome its traditional functions of mere text companion, adding information to the plot, by filling in gaps and suggesting fresh perspectives, enlarging the reading. Thus, understanding that spoken and visual texts are not detached, but complementary languages, and that isolated the pieces would have their meanings changed, this work aims to analyze the relations between Wilde’s play and Beardsley’s illustrations.

This thesis explores the works of Oscar Wilde as they articulate and model an aesthetic of play. I show that Wilde distinguishes between true and false forms--or what I call models and anti-models--of play in a number of areas: art, criticism, and society, language, thought, and culture, self and other. My introduction establishes a context for the cultural value of play in the nineteenth century. I survey the ideas of Friedrich Schiller, who treats play in the aesthetic realm; Matthew Arnold, who discusses Criticism as a free play of the mind; Herbert Spencer, who explores play in the context of evolution; and Johan Huizinga, who analyses play in its social context. In my three chapters on Wilde's critical essays, I draw upon their ideas to describe Wilde's philosophy of play and examine how the form of Wilde's critical essays illuminates his aesthetic. My first chapter explores models and anti-models of play in Art, as they are described by Vivian in "The Decay of Lying." By exploring the role of "lying" in its aesthetic rather ethical context, Vivian demonstrates the value of the play-spirit for the development of culture. My second chapter discusses models and anti-models of play in Criticism as they are described by Gilbert in "The Critic as Artist." By refashioning the traditions of nineteenth-century criticism, Gilbert presents his own model of criticism as an aesthetic activity and demonstrates the role of the play-spirit in the development of the individual and the race. My third chapter relates models and anti-models of play in art, criticism, and social life to the modes of self-realization described by Wilde in "The Soul of Man Under Socialism." I take up Wilde's well-known paradox, that Socialism is a means of realizing Individualism, by showing how Wilde plays with these terms in an aesthetic rather than a political context. In the remaining chapters I read Wilde's fictional and dramatic texts in light of his aesthetics and treat the characters as models and anti-models of the play-spirit. In The Picture of Dorian Gray, I take the measure of play, not morality, as a guide for interpretation. In this reading Lord Henry Wotton is the novel's critic as artist, while Dorian Gray, with his literal-mindedness, his imitative instinct, and his ruthless narcissism, fails to achieve the aesthetic disinterestedness that characterizes true play. My sixth chapter traces themes related to play—game, ceremony, and performance—in Wilde's Society Comedies to demonstrate how these plays both reflect and critique the spectacle of Society and the conventions of nineteenth-century melodrama. My thesis concludes with The Importance of Being Earnest as it presents a culmination of Wilde's play-spirit and his playful linguistic strategies. I show how both the form and content of Earnest model the paradoxical ideal of play itself—that through play we may realize the experience of being at one with ourselves and on good terms with the world. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

by Amy Tak-Yee Lai. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1998. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves [106]-114). / Abstract also in Chinese. / Chapter Chapter One --- "Narcissism, Approach and Theories" --- p.1 / Chapter Chapter Two --- The Artist and His Portrait: The Picture of Dorian Gray --- p.25 / Chapter Chapter Three --- The Stutterer and His Temple: The Temple of the Golden Pavilion --- p.49 / Chapter Chapter Four --- The Poet and His Garden: Ying'er --- p.70 / Chapter Chapter Five --- "Narcissism, Culture and Self" --- p.95 / Works Cited and Consulted --- p.106

This dissertation examines the motif of idolatry in the work of two modernist authors, Oscar Wilde and Joseph Conrad, and one modernist filmmaker, Alfred Hitchcock. The idols in these texts serve a contradictory role, signifying both increasing commodification under capitalism and an attempt to formulate a new ethics of image-making in response to this global transition. Chapter 1 analyzes Wilde’s play Salomé. Attending to the original French and to biblical allusion, I demonstrate that the text’s key generative trope is idolatry, which occupies a position both sacred and profane. The play superimposes two moments of historical rupture, positing Salomé as the embodiment of a new artistic potential of idolatry under monopoly capitalism. Chapter 2 analyzes Conrad’s early fiction, particularly The Nigger of the “Narcissus,” “The Return,” “Karain,” and Nostromo. I track a three-stage development in Conrad’s representations of idols, whereby the idol is associated with utopian fantasy, false ideals, and the artistic process. I also identify a new image-making technique, “retroactive modification,” which attempts to destabilize the image and thus counter problems of narrative representation, particularly reification and historical inauthenticity. Chapter 3 analyzes Hitchcock’s Blackmail, Saboteur, and Shadow of a Doubt, and challenges the notion of Hitchcock as auteur. The first two films culminate in sequences featuring monumental and iconic statuary. In the earlier British film, this process signifies a reckoning with history; in the later American film, it signifies the threat of history’s erasure and the degradation of art. Shadow of a Doubt signals a shift to a post-modern global-capitalist paradigm and a focus on the celebrity idol. My methodology builds on the work of Fredric Jameson and Slavoj Žižek to elucidate cultural fantasies underlying the texts and the ways in which the texts perform the psychical maneuver of disavowal, whereby a proposition is simultaneously asserted and denied. This double movement in Wilde, Conrad, and Hitchcock’s texts bespeaks a striving, through the motif of idolatry, to represent the image in motion. Though this desire is finally realized in the technology of film, the authenticity of that realization is undermined by the historical contradictions that enable its production. / 2020-12-11T00:00:00Z

Thèse de doctorat : ETUDES ANGLAISES : Metz : 1997. / 1997METZ015L. 396 ref.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 1987.

Not available / text

This is a study of what I argue is a neglected side of Aestheticism. A standard definition of Aestheticism is that its practitioners turn away from the general current of modernity to protest its utilitarian and materialistic values, but this generalization ignores the profound influence of contemporary philosophical and scientific thought on such major figures of British Aestheticism as Walter Pater and Oscar Wilde. This study focuses on Aesthetes who are not in flight from modernity. I call their type of Aestheticism "Epicurean Aestheticism" and argue that since this temperament is characterized by a willingness to engage with the flux of modern times it must be distinguished from the more familiar, escapist form of Aestheticism I call "Platonic Aestheticism." I propose that Aestheticism be viewed as a spectrum with Epicurean Aestheticism on one side and the Platonic variety on the other. While Platonic Aesthetes like W. B . Yeats and Stephane Mallarme continue the Romantic project of trying to counter modernity with various idealist and absolutist philosophies, Epicurean Aesthetes adopt materialist and relativistic strategies in their desire to make the most of modern life. I argue that the first unmistakable signs of Epicurean Aestheticism are to be found in Thomas De Quincey, that the sensibility is fully formulated be Pater, continued by Wilde, and finds a current representative in Tom Stoppard. All Aesthetes are dedicated to the pursuit of beauty, but Platonic Aesthetes seek beauty in an eternal and transcendent realm, while Epicurean Aesthetes have given up such absolutist habits of thought. Pater writes: "Modern thought is distinguished from ancient by its cultivation of the "relative" spirit in place of the "absolute." Epicurean Aesthetes want a new aesthetic that will parallel the paradigm shift from absolutism to relativism. While a nostalgic, quasi-religious longing for a purely ideal realm characterizes Platonic Aesthetes, Epicurean Aesthetes accept that the high, idealistic road to eternal beauty is closed. Instead of lamenting this fact, they start looking for beauty among the uncertainties of the phenomenal world: by viewing life as an aesthetic spectacle to be observed and experimented on with playful detachment they become Epicureans of the flux of modernity.