As the exponent of the aesthetic movement, Oscar Wilde has paidalmost excessive attention to the aestheticization of indoor spaces. For him, thehumanly-decorated house offers a sense of order and reason, which has, to...As the exponent of the aesthetic movement, Oscar Wilde has paidalmost excessive attention to the aestheticization of indoor spaces. For him, thehumanly-decorated house offers a sense of order and reason, which has, to a largeextent, assisted the formation of man’s ego and identity, while the outside world,filled with horror, confusion and anxiety, is always associated with the loss ofsubjectivity and individuality. His topophilia is well manifested in some of his morerenowned works, while its fullest expression can no doubt be found in The Decay ofLying, where he would complain in Vivian’s voice how “one becomes abstract andimpersonal” out of doors. In his one-act tragedy Salomé, however, the event whichwas traditionally believed to take place within Herod’s palace was deliberately setoutside the doors. To a certain degree, this arrangement has set the tone for the wholetragedy. Through the employment of the outdoor spaces and the deliberate confusionof the Inside with the Outside, Oscar Wilde has successfully created an atmosphere ofmadness, absurdity and horror that has haunted Salomé from the very beginning: theoutdoor spaces, in facilitating the identification of Salome with the image of Maenad,give the play a touch of madness; Salome’s deliberate attempts at confusing the Insidewith the Outside, principally motivated by the male gaze that permeates the indoorspaces and costs Salome her subjectivity, was plagued with futility and fruitlessness,from whence came the horror of homelessness that has consummated her tragedy.展开更多
文摘As the exponent of the aesthetic movement, Oscar Wilde has paidalmost excessive attention to the aestheticization of indoor spaces. For him, thehumanly-decorated house offers a sense of order and reason, which has, to a largeextent, assisted the formation of man’s ego and identity, while the outside world,filled with horror, confusion and anxiety, is always associated with the loss ofsubjectivity and individuality. His topophilia is well manifested in some of his morerenowned works, while its fullest expression can no doubt be found in The Decay ofLying, where he would complain in Vivian’s voice how “one becomes abstract andimpersonal” out of doors. In his one-act tragedy Salomé, however, the event whichwas traditionally believed to take place within Herod’s palace was deliberately setoutside the doors. To a certain degree, this arrangement has set the tone for the wholetragedy. Through the employment of the outdoor spaces and the deliberate confusionof the Inside with the Outside, Oscar Wilde has successfully created an atmosphere ofmadness, absurdity and horror that has haunted Salomé from the very beginning: theoutdoor spaces, in facilitating the identification of Salome with the image of Maenad,give the play a touch of madness; Salome’s deliberate attempts at confusing the Insidewith the Outside, principally motivated by the male gaze that permeates the indoorspaces and costs Salome her subjectivity, was plagued with futility and fruitlessness,from whence came the horror of homelessness that has consummated her tragedy.
