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home and abroad as well aspush the study of Oscar Wilde’s works to a higher level.
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Chapter Two Literature Review

2.1 Overview of critical responses to The Picture of Dorian Gray
The early studies are dominated by the controversial personality of Oscar Wilde, whichare restricted to a narrow scope of his homosexuality events and court issues and thereforerarely touch his ideas and works. With the influence of New Criticism, more and more text-oriented studies come into being, the study of Oscar Wilde begins to involve the textualanalysis to a great extent and the critics begin to pay attention to his aesthetic theory andworks. People’s passion for Oscar Wilde is no longer rest on his homosexuality and private life, but finds out some kind of prototypes of the modern even postmodern literature from histheory and creation practice. The publication of Dorian Gray, though it has taken place onlyin a magazine, brought Wilde all the attention he could desire (Ellmann, 1988, p.320). But itmet, for the most part with criticisms of immorality firstly. There are two climaxes toward theresearch of Oscar Wilde and his works in China. The first climax is during 1920s-1980s, thisperiod is mainly characterized by the translation of his works; after the stagnation about half acentury, the research reaches another summit. Chinese critics become more tolerant andobjective, pay more attention to the insights and values of Wilde’s works and begin to analyzehim and his Picture from various angles. The following overview is mainly divided into fourcategories according to different emphasis.The first category is from the perspective of aesthetic analysis, which is to analyze thework from the views of aestheticism provoked by Wilde all his lifetime. Oscar Wilde is theleader of “art for art’s sake” movement, who spends his whole lifetime promotingaestheticism and acts in accordance with aesthetic doctrine regardless of the moral regulationand social rule in the Victorian time, it is no wonder that his works, especially Picture is thetypical representation of his aesthetic views. Richard Ellmann (1970)’s book Oscar Wilde: ACollection of Critical is the most comprehensive and objective collection of the criticalarticles on Wilde, providing precious materials for the later study in the early days. Latermore and more critics recognize the modern elements in Wilde’s works thus various newinterpretations emerge, such as Yang Minyang (2004) probes into the novel by exploring theconnection between modernism and aestheticism. Patrick Duggan explores the conflictbetween aestheticism and morality. Dominic Manganiello (1983) firstly puts forwards afundamental question about the aesthete’s creed that how can art, which is imbued with goodand evil, be both aesthetically beautiful and morally destructive, by raising the question hetells us that Wilde does not keep these spheres absolutely distinct in fact, initially hetransposes them only to bring them back together in the end. By making ethics and aestheticsexchange places, Wilde reverses the usual hierarchy of value. Zhou Xiaoyi (2002) finds thatthe hidden meaning of Oscar Wilde and his aestheticism is the light of consumption andfashion.
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2.2 Brief introduction to the myth- archetypal criticism
We all know that Western literature originate from the ancient mythology. But it is notan easy thing to give a precise definition of my