Monstrous and Beautiful: Jungian Archetypes in Wilde’s <em>Salomé</em>

<p>The subject of my research is the 1891 play <em>Salom</em><em>é</em>, by Oscar Wilde and my thesis addresses the modern psychological implications of the cultural truths revealed by Wilde's re-vision of the myth of that biblical femme fatale. I argue that in fashioning a tragic heroine out of a female monster figure of “Immortal Vice”, Oscar Wilde created a document that captures two contradictory narratives: one in which Salomé plays the heroine of a tragedy and another in which she performs the role and functions of a villain. By employing Carl Jung's psychology of the archetypes, I am enabled to read Wilde’s play as a cultural and psychological phenomenon that (self-consciously) constructs a religious and patriarchal narrative around its central female character, which captures her in a tragedy of socially imposed destruction. Ultimately, this paper poses a psychological assessment of <em>Salom</em><em>é</em>, in which Jungian archetypes illustrate--at a psychic level--Oscar Wilde’s precocious and liberal-minded modernizations of a two thousand-year old myth.</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Arts (MA)

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

English

Year dc:date.available

2021

Author dc:creator

• Rajnish, Nayana

Contributors dc:contributor

• Myron Yeager
• Joanna Levin
• Richard Ruppel

• Jung
• Wilde
• Salome
• Archetypes
• Psychology
• Literature in English, British Isles
• Other Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
• Psychological Phenomena and Processes

Repository record dc:identifier

https://digitalcommons.chapman.edu/english_theses/25

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:digitalcommons.chapman.edu:english_theses-1027