A Literature Review of On Female Destiny in Oscar

1、A Literature Review of On Female Destiny in Oscar Wildes A Woman of No ImportanceOscar Wilde, an Irish famous dramatist, poet and advocate of aesthetic movement, has gained high achievement in his theatre. Furthermore,“the keenness of his intellect, the individuality of his point of view, the excell

2、ence of his verbal style, and above all, the genuinely dramatic quality of his inspiration”, there are many other elements which still need further studies. Wildes multiple identities provide great opportunities for people who have an interest on him to study. There are many scholars who did some re

3、views about Wildes social comedies and have achieved abundant accomplishment. The study of Wildes Comedies in west can be divided into three periods. Critiques about Wildes comedies began to appear in the first period (form 1892 to l899), reflecting opinions of the age; in the second period (from 19

4、00 to 1969), the text was the focus of attention; in the third period (since 1970), people began to apply new methods of literary criticism, featuring the modern trend of the study of Wildes comedies (Nassaar 2007:79-84). Nassaar compared the protagonists in Lady Windermeres Fan and Mrs.Warrens Prof

5、ession (2000), and suggested that Wilde put little emphasis on morality while Shaw spared no effort to talk about it in Wildes Lady Windermeres Fan and Shaws Mrs. Warrens Profession; while in Wildes The Important of Being Earnest(n.d.), he explored the themethe abused child in Wildes works, especial

6、ly in two of his plays: A Woman of no Importance and The Importance of Being Earnest; Cave believed that “while Wilde had a vision of where theatre might be progressing, he nonetheless saw the need to provide his audience of the present with some bridge into new kinds of awareness.”(Cave 2005:220) S

7、tatistics provided by Edward Halim Mikhails Oscar Wilde: An Annotated Bibliography of Criticism proves that more than 871 data has been studied related to Oscar Wildes comedies. From now on, the research is still going on and many new accomplishments are emerging on the literary circle. Most of Wild

8、es reviews appear as a form of newspapers and periodicals. For instance, In Wildes New Women: The New Woman on Wilde, Heilmann brought forward one point that “Wilde lent women public visibility at the same time he seems to conjure up the feminine no as a site of gender subversion but on the contrary

9、 as a quasi-biological marker of female inferiority.” (Heilmann 2002:142) This point is impressive and striking, since few of critics has analyzed the female characters in Wildes social comedies.George Bernard Shaw on An Ideal Husband on Saturday Review, William Archer on The Importance of Being Ear

10、nest on World. Notwithstanding, some of the reviews fails to reach the thoroughly and deeply aspects of Wildes thoughts, the masses could still have a better understanding of reviewers attitudes toward Wildes comedies due to the timeliness of the appraisal.Scholars in China also did many papers and

11、researches in recent years.In On Oscar Wildes View of Feminism, Yang Ni divided the female characters in Wildes plays into four types: women struggling for liberty of love and marriage, women struggling for social equality, women with strict moral standards, and women who deny and criticize the patr

12、iarchal society. Yang analyzed the feminist movement of the late 19th century Wilde was in and Wildes family backgrounds, and concluded that Wilde was a male writer with some avant-garde view of feminism. Studies of Wildes comedies did not attach important attention in academic circle until the late

13、 1980s, Wu Xueping, professor of Guangzhou University, elaborated thoroughly on the characteristics and connotation from the perspective of character images, language, the use of props and the setting of suspense of Wildes comedies in the Doctoral dissertation Research on Oscar Wilde Comedy. From th

14、e beginning of the 1940s till the end of 1970s, study on Wildes comedies reached into stagnation due to social and political reasons. Since the 1980s, researches reached astonishment accomplishment. There were about forty articles about Wildes social comedies. Those articles make a concrete and obje

15、ctive analysis on it and thus probe into the artistic characteristics and ideological connotation of Wildes comedies. Take Fan Tongweis The Magical Effect of The Fan, (樊同伟 1983:2)Hao Zhengyis The Combination of Fun And Serious as examples. Wu Xuepings Family Conception in Wildes Comedies focused muc

16、h on the ideological connotation of Wildes works. Those thesis were on the basis of detailed and tactical analysis of the text, which mining the ideological thoughts and social significance of Wides achievements.Since few of critics has analyzed the female destiny in Wildes social comedies, whether

17、Wilde is a feminism advocate or a marker of female inferiority will be analyzed and explored with female destiny in the following chapters and let readers get a better and thoroughly understanding of female destiny in Wildes social comedies.Bibliography1 Beckson K, ed. Oscar Wilde,1970. The Critical HeritageM. London and New York: Routledge.2 Bird, A., 1977. The Plays of Oscar WildeM, London: Vision Press.3 Raby ,P., ed. 2001. The Cambridge Companion to Oscar WildeM. 上海:上海外语教育出版 社.4 Sanduleseu C G,ed.1994. Rediscovery Oscar WildeM. Gerrards Cross: 1994. Colin Sm