Wong Nga-lai. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 108-112). / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / Acknowledgements --- p.i / Abstract --- p.ii-v / Introduction / Homosexuality: a sin versus a choice --- p.1 -5 / Chapter Chapter One --- Wilde and his sacrifices --- p.6 -38 / Chapter Chapter Two --- Forster and his private novel --- p.39 -70 / Chapter Chapter Three --- Rechy and his new order --- p.71-104 / Conclusion / Still a long way to go --- p.105 -107 / Selected Bibliography --- p.108-112

vii, 157 p. / In the second half of the nineteenth century, the Aesthetic Movement in England coalesced literary and visual arts in unprecedented ways. While the writers associated with the Aesthetic Movement reflected on visual art through the exercise of criticism, their encounters with painting, portraiture, and sculpture also led to the articulation of a problem. That problem centers on the fascination with the attentive look, or the physical act of seeing in a specialized way for an extended period of time that can result in a transformation in the mind of the observer. In this dissertation, I consider how Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Henry James, and Oscar Wilde utilize the attentive look in their poetry, fiction, and drama, respectively. As I argue in this dissertation, the writers associated with the Aesthetic Movement approach and treat attention as a new tool for self-creation and self-development. As these writers generally attempt to transcend both the dullness and repetitiveness associated with modern forms of industrialized labor as well as to create an antidote for the endless distractions affiliated with the modern urban environment, they also develop or interrogate systems for training and regulating the senses. What these writers present as a seemingly spontaneous attentive engagement with art and beauty they also sell to the public as a specialized form of perception and experience that can only be achieved through training or, more specifically, through an attentive reading of their works. While these writers attempt to subvert institutional authority, whether in the form of the Royal Academy or the Oxford University system, they also generate new forms of authority and knowledge. Even though the Aesthetic Movement is not a homogeneous set of texts and art works, the Aesthetic Movement can be characterized in terms of its utilization of attentiveness as a way to both understand and create modern subjectivity. / Committee in charge: Dr. Forest Pyle， Chair； Dr. Sangita Gopal， Member； Dr. Linda Kintz， Member； Dr. Kenneth Calhoon， Outside Member

This work aims to analyze the behavior of some characters in the fairy tales of Irish writer Oscar Fingal O Flahertie Wills Wilde (1854-1900), more specifically the five ones those consists the work The Happy Prince and other stories, from 1888. We intend to verify why art s strength comes from the elements that compound it, whereas ideological units, plurissignificant and multifaceted, are only likely to be analyzed when facing other elements, containing contexts and users of such contexts. In Wilde s fairy tales this aesthetic sense prevails and the characters tend to acquire multiple forms and a lot of meanings. Therefore, if we could consider the literary work as an ideological system it is essential to emphasize the characters who are inserted in that system, as well look into it so that one can delimitate its constituting elements, identifying whether its actions are right products of criticism and reflection about the facts or if they are motivated by instincts inherent to rationality, and proceeding to the analysis of these characters not only concerning themselves but also concerning the other characters, to the space they share, the time offered to them and above all, the diegesis which captures them. Thus, Oscar Wilde becomes a valuable importance author to verify all these concepts, due to the variety of his gallery of literary types and due to his ironic and acute aesthetic sense that will lead to the analysis of the characters constitution and motivation of their possible, unstoppable sometimes, subversive posture. / Este trabalho visa analisar o comportamento de determinadas personagens em alguns contos de fadas do escritor irlandês Oscar Fingal O Flahertie Wills Wilde (1854-1900), mais especificamente os cinco contos que compõem a obra O Príncipe Feliz e outras Histórias, de 1888. Desejamos verificar por que a força da arte advém dos signos que a compõem e tais signos, enquanto unidades ideológicas plurissignificantes e multiformes, somente são passíveis de serem analisados quando estão em face de outros signos, dos contextos que os comportam e dos usuários que se fazem valer deles. Nos contos de fadas wildianos esse senso de estética prevalece, e suas personagens tendem a adquirir formas múltiplas e vários significados. Assim, se consideramos as obras literárias como sistemas ideológicos, faz-se necessário dar relevo às personagens que povoam tais sistemas, olhá-las de maneira a delimitar seus elementos constitutivos, identificar se suas ações são produtos acertados da criticidade e da reflexão frente aos acontecimentos ou se elas são motivadas pela força de instintos subjacentes à racionalidade, proceder à análise dessas personagens não apenas frente a si próprias, mas também frente às demais personagens, ao espaço que elas partilham, ao tempo que lhes é ofertado e sobremaneira à diegese que as acolhe. Nesse sentido, Oscar Wilde passa a ser um autor de valorosa importância para a verificação de todos esses conceitos, devido à sua variada galeria de tipos literários e de um aguçado e irônico senso estético que nos leva a analisar as constituições e motivações das personagens a partir de uma possível, e por vezes irrefreável, postura subversiva. / Mestre em Teoria Literária

M.A. (English) / Victorian studies is a field much-studied and, during the century that has passed since the end of Queen Victoria‘s reign, literary criticism on the subject has been extensive. In the main, however, criticism has tended to focus on the protagonists of Victorian novels, whether to argue that their journeys are immoral, or represent a warning against immorality, or to examine their behaviour and so arrive at conclusions regarding identity. Through a close reading of Oscar Wilde‘s The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), Robert Louis Stevenson‘s The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886), and Bram Stoker‘s Dracula (1897), and by focussing on the reactions and responses of Victorian society (as the texts represent it) to the novel‘s transgressive characters rather than on those characters themselves (as has been the trend) this dissertation moves away from readings of duality and moral judgment and towards a greater understanding of the intricacies of late-Victorian society itself. In addition, and through this process, this dissertation interrogates the bifurcated and contradictory nature of the Victorian moral structure and destabilizes the binary oppositions of character judgment that were so fundamental in its creation. Furthermore, through a discussion of the historical context of the text‘s chosen for this study, this dissertation challenges the formulation and authenticity of Victorian morality by considering the manner in which power informed the behaviour and decisions of middle-class Victorians at the turn of the century. To this end, I will consider how the philosophies of Friedrich Nietzsche, especially those pertaining to power and morality, are invaluable in problematizing the binary system of categorization that so dominated the late-Victorian cultural space. Finally, I argue that the texts I have elected to study represent a climate of unrest and dissatisfaction with the Victorian moral climate at the fin de siècle (or turn of the century) and that they are instrumental in our understanding of that moral climate and the subsequent changes to it.

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