Religion and mythology in Oscar Wilde's poem The Sphinx

Seminar paper from the year 2005 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1,0, LMU Munich (Department für Anglistik und Amerikanistik), course: Oscar Wilde, 28 entries in the bibliography, language: English, comment: Kommentar des Dozenten (nach Benotung): Ein geradezu unglaublich belesenes und wissenschaftlich akribisch gearbeitetes paper, das - in Abhebung von Bernard Fehrs Deutung - Wildes Sphinx als bewusstes Konstrukt inhaltlicher Anspielungen auf griechische und ägyptische Mythologie erweist und darüber hinaus noch verschiedene soziokulturelle bzw. psychologisch-beiographische Lesarten des Gedichts anbietet. [...] Ansonsten weist die Arbeit ein Niveau auf, das man sich bei so mancher Abschlussarbeit wünschen würde. Congratulations! , abstract: Introduction §A poet is sitting in his room beside a Sphinx. Within the poem the Sphinx forms his main focus of interest, his whole attention belongs to her: a cheap souvenir from some street corner. But inside of the poet s room the Sphinx no longer remains a little piece of stone but, right in front of his eyes, becomes a real-life Sphinx the age-old female demon of death, who besieged the city of Thebes as a punishment for the king of Thebes who introduced homosexual love into Greek culture and thus incured Hera s hatred. §The Sphinx, one of Oscar Wilde s most enchanting poems, is woven out of a net of various mythological beliefs and religious ideas. Wilde invokes a hotch-potch of varying creatures, who convey a magical atmosphere of ancient grandeur. In order to understand the poem one has to get to know the concepts that stand behind the various mythical creatures, gods and heroes. Therefore I will explain to which mythologies Wilde relates to and how they refer to each other. In this connection the time of Oscar Wilde has to be taken into consideration, too: Victorianism, with its crumbling of old values and conquering of new worlds; the period of decadence; the period of aestheticism. §I would like to show some of the multitude of possible accesses, e.g. the identification of the Sphinx with the figure of the femme fatale; the personification of the Sphinx as the temptations and desires of the poet respectively The Sphinx as a metaphor for the loss of Christian faith in Victorian culture.