Abstract: The Ballad of Reading Gaol is a unique poem full of ideological connotations. By virtue of his own experience in prison, Oscar Wilde reveals the dehumanizing and barbaric management system of British prisons, and puts forward a modern proposition of how prisons and the legal system should treat prisoners. In addition to the critical acuteness and foresightedness in its theme, this poem also has the significance of transcendentality in its artistic techniques. Specifically, at a time when the lyrical trend of Romanticism had not yet subsided, Wilde took the lead to employ an anti-lyric mode of narrative in this poem to sever his tie with the Romantic lyricism successfully and, at the same time, draw a clear line against the narrative techniques of traditional poetry. In short, this poem, which seems to be straightforward and plain and, all along, has not attracted much attention from the academia, actually contains a series of pursuits of modernity ahead of his time. In a sense, it is The Ballad of Reading Gaol that firmly embeds an aesthetic factor of “modernity” into the British literature of Wilde's time.

Key words: Oscar Wilde, The Ballad of Reading Gaol, prison, law, narrative