University of Southern Mississippi
The Queer Gothic Hero's Journey in Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray
Abstract
dc:description.abstract<p>This study of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray argues that the novel participates in a Gothic subversion of the archetypal hero’s journey. The novel employs Gothic devices to supplant heroic narremes. As the novel progresses, both Dorian (as a type of hero-character) and the narrative repeatedly deny or subvert the normative idea of heroism later reified in Joseph Campbell’s archetypal theory. While Campbell’s hero attempts to secure and universalize a heterosocial story, Wilde’s hero is recuperated through a reconfiguring of normative failure as queer success. What is ostensibly a failure of the normative hero to achieve his quest is actually the queer Gothic hero’s interrogation of Victorian London and its conception of heroism along untenable gender norms.</p>
Degree
thesis:*- Name thesis:degree_name
- Master of Arts (MA)
- Level thesis:degree_level
- Masters Thesis
- Discipline thesis:degree_discipline
- English
- Year dc:date.available
- 2014
Author and committee
dc:creator, dc:contributor.*- Author dc:creator
-
- Ethridge, Kyle Leon
- Contributors dc:contributor
-
- Alexandra Valint
- Martina Sciolino
- Eric Tribunella
Subjects
dc:subject × 7Identifiers
dc:identifier.*- Repository record dc:identifier
- https://aquila.usm.edu/masters_theses/48
- OAI identifier oai:identifier
- oai:aquila.usm.edu:masters_theses-1041