Three evil characters of literature in the context of the aesthetics of the evil: Mephistopheles, Lord Henry and Suat

In this thesis, it was studied how "the evil" as aesthetic factor in literature is processed based on evil characters of three important fictional works. These are Mephistopheles from Faust by Goethe, Lord Henry from The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde and Suat from Huzur by Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar. In the first part of the thesis, it was examined the concept of the evil in terms of mythology, philosophy and religion. In addition to this, it was focused on changing perception of the evil in modern period. In the second part of the thesis, it was investigated aesthetics of evil, relationship between ethics and aesthetics and the evil in literature on the basis of Turkish and Western literature. In the final part of the study, three important character were analyzed in the context of the aesthetics of evil. Keywords: Evil, aesthetics of evil, the evil in literature, Mephistopheles, Lord Henry, Suat