本論文以後現代主義分析奧斯卡．王爾德的著作，《美少年格雷的畫像》中的矛盾元素以及其中作品風格和後現代主義代表產物－後設小說之相似之處。第一章先檢視此小說出版後的評價，並說明雖同性戀團體將王爾德視為同性戀中的先烈，而實際上王爾德的身分更接近受害者而非挑戰道德尺度的革命烈士。第二章探討王爾德個人及作品中矛盾元素的形成及原因，並且分析王爾德在極力抗拒被歸類為任何宗教或政治意識的特質，與後現代主義作家相關聯之處。第三章提出琳達．赫哲仁對於後現代主義文學作品的定義和特性與王爾德之唯一小說作比較。另外，王爾德作品中對於中產階級和當時維多利亞背景的封閉價值觀有許多諷刺詼諧的情節，顛覆了人們對於惡人必有報應之固有概念。王爾德在作品中倡導藝術應該僅為美而生，這本小說嚴正的挑戰維多利亞背景下既有的價值觀及普遍文學作品中必須反映真實人生和道德針砭的要求。

The thesis attempts to demonstrate how the postmodernist practice and theory of literature give fruitful viewpoint on Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray; also, the discussion and disclosure of the inconsistency and ambivalence of Wilde’s personality and novel can be explained in relation to postmodernist relativism. Chapter one applies to state how Wilde’s aestheticism contradicted the didactic and moralistic view of most Victorian critics’ expectation; further, it at the same time expounds Wilde’s doctrine of art for art’s sake. Chapter two explores that Wilde shares his resistance against the constraints of any intellectual system with postmodernist writers. The method of inversion and paradox serves to compare with the contemporary strategy of deconstruction. By reversing the relationship between life and art, Wilde’s paradoxes resemble the strategy of deconstruction. Chapter three presents Linda Hutcheon’s concepts in the essays with the characterization of postmodernist writings. Metafiction plays an important role in the postmodernist fore-grounds; according to her concepts, the reader becomes a collaborator in the literary process and resembles the creative process of the author. In The Picture of Dorian Gray, for instance, the Vane episode serves as a clever parody in which Wilde ridicules all realist and moralizing art. Like a postmodernist writer, Wilde is able to ridicule and parody the rigid realistic literary tradition of the Victorian age.

Table of Contents 
Introduction..….………………….......................1
Chapter One: 
The reception of The Picture of Dorian Gray ………….10
The novel and its homosexual representation ………….10 
The reception of Wilde’s work in general ………….. 16
     A hostile reception of Dorian Gray………….…………. 21
Chapter Two: 
Ambivalence: Relativism and Deconstruction.......... 27 
Wilde’s relativism: dandyism and the truth of masks 28 
Deconstruction And Subversion…………..…………………37
Wilde’s anti-essentialist paradoxes…..……………… 42
Chapter Three: Wilde’s postmodernism and Oscarian aestheticism……….............................……..47 
Postmodernism in general: Metafiction and Anti-Realism……..........................................51
The artist-critic and the critic-artist…………………………….........................55
Parody and subversion…………………………………..…..58
Apocalypse Now in fin-de-siècle and postmodernism……64
Conclusion……………………………………………………….73
Works Cited………………………………………………………77

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