Güzellik üzerine: Oscar Wilde'ın The Picture of Dorion Gray ve Nella Larsen'ın Passing adlı eserlerinde beden ve ruh ilişkisi

The "beautiful" and the "sublime" are two notions that intermingle with each other in Aesthetics. The beautiful often viewed in "the objects with exact forms" stands with the sublime recognized in "formless objects with an image of limitlessness" in literature, the arts and many other subject areas. They explore the senses of attraction and awe aroused in people's mind. Taken these forms of judgements into consideration, this study analyses Nella Larsen's Passing (1929) from American Literature and Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891) from English Literature in terms of race, the unity of body and soul in reference to two philosophers Immanuel Kant and Edmund Burke. The white beauties of both novels, Larsen's Clare Kendry and Wilde's Dorian Gray, highlight the fear of ugliness and the appreciation of beauty in their tragic stories. The study centres on the process and ways in which their enchanting beauty results into a division of their body and soul throughout their search for the sublime. Beauty which brings along wholeness and pleasure, now threatens the protagonists' corporeal and spiritual aspects. The study concludes that kalokagathia (referring to the unity of corporeal beauty and spiritual refinement) is not achieved neither in Passing (1929) and nor in The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891) for Clare Kendry and Dorian Gray's betrayal of authenticity (Eco, 2010: 45). It is also underlined that Nella Larsen and Oscar Wilde through these bodies' traumatic murders harmonize beauty and stability. Keywords: Beauty, Sublime, Nella Larsen, Clare Kendry, Oscar Wilde, Dorian Gray, Duality.