Date of Award
Summer 8-2014
Degree Type
Masters Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Department
English
Committee Chair
Alexandra Valint
Committee Chair Department
English
Committee Member 2
Martina Sciolino
Committee Member 2 Department
English
Committee Member 3
Eric Tribunella
Committee Member 3 Department
English
Abstract
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.
Copyright
2014, Kyle Leon Ethridge
Recommended Citation
Ethridge, Kyle Leon, "The Queer Gothic Hero's Journey in Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray" (2014). Master's Theses. 48.
https://aquila.usm.edu/masters_theses/48