| dc.description.abstract | This master’s thesis sets out to examine the vital fashioning of a complex self in Oscar Wilde’s "De Profundis" through formal and textual analyses based on close readings. Inspired by literary theoretical definitions of self-fashioning by Greenblatt and Foucault, the argument builds on readings by Doylen, Zim, Angvik, and Dollimore, among others. Whereas Greenblattian self-fashioners aspire towards an ideal set by society, the marginalized Wilde attempts to pursue a Vita Nuova, plotting an individualistic course that goes awry. Wilde’s self-fashioning project in "De Profundis" can roughly be divided into three, according to the tripartite composition of the letter itself. The first part begins by depicting Wilde as a ruined prisoner. The authorial persona confronts his past in retrospect as a witness narrator, drawing inspiration particularly from Dante’s "Inferno" in the process of facing his demons. While a significant factor in Wilde’s downfall and moral degradation, Douglas serves as a catalyst in the writer’s attempt at purification. Hence, Wilde uses Douglas as a foil to manipulate and “author-ize” the conception of himself as a passivized actor in the tragic story of himself and his ruin. The second part focuses on Wilde’s individualism, his Vita Nuova, and his identity as a prisoner. The letter writer’s imitation of Christ takes as a model the homonymous genre, a prototype for medieval self-fashioners. The thesis argues that Wilde’s take on this genre is blinding for the author, who employs it as an idealising and problematic casting mould. Wilde claims that he does not need religion in addition to morality and reason, yet his continual resort to Christianity proves otherwise, leading to a questioning of his reliability. Finally, Wilde returns to Douglas in a futile attempt to reconcile with his addressee. In an ambivalent attempt at reconciliation, there are interesting allusions to Shakespeare’s "Hamlet". The thesis squares with Dollimore in that Wilde’s prospect of clearing his name, i.e. his rehabilitation, is a “comforting deception”, while it also, as a conventional self-fashioning, results in “not an epiphany of identity freely chosen but a cultural artifact”. However, while the letter should not be dismissed solely as a “defeat” as claimed by Dollimore, it entails indeed a self-deception necessary for the author to survive prison. | eng |