Monstrous and Beautiful. Jungian Archetypes in Wilde's Salome

      Аннотация: The subject of this research is the 1891 play Salom?, by Oscar Wilde and this book 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 Salom? 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 Salom?, in which Jungian archetypes illustrate--at a psychic level--Oscar Wilde’s precocious and liberal-minded modernizations of a two thousand-year old myth.

Ключевые слова: Oscar Wilde, Salome, Carl Jung, tragedy, patriarchy, heroine, Bible, John the Baptist, Jokanaan, King Herod