English literature: The Picture of Dorian Grey (Oscar Wilde), Appunti di Inglese

Scarica English literature: The Picture of Dorian Grey (Oscar Wilde) e più Appunti in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! The Picture of Dorian Gray Brief summary The novel opens, with a strong appeal to our senses, in a painter’s studio with Basil Hallward, the artist who is painting the portrait of a young extraordinary beautiful aristocrat, Dorian Gray, and speaks about him to his friend Lord Henry. Then Dorian appears and he is so fascinated by the words about beauty and youth of Lord Henry that, looking at his portrait, expresses a wish “I wish I could stay young and the picture grow old. I’d give everything for that! I’d give my soul for that”. One day Dorian reveals to his two friends his deep love for a young actress, Sibyl Vane and wants them to see her perform. But Sibyl that night, acts without passion and Dorian, disilluded abandons her with cruel words. During the night she commits suicide and on the portrait appears the first touch of cruelty on the mouth. Dorian decides to hide the picture in a secret room. From this moment on, the young man leads a double life and rumours about his behaviour spread in London, but Dorian’s face remains as pure and innocent as ever. One night, when Dorian is thirty-eight, Basil Hallward goes to inform him he is going to Paris where he would like to show the picture. Dorian brings him in front of the canvas and stabs him to keep the secret of his life. Later he blackmails Alan Campbell, once a friend of his, and obliges him to destroy the painter’s body chemically. One evening, while going out of an opium den, Dorian is seized round his neck by James Vane, Sibyl’s brother, who follows him to Selby Royal, Dorian’s country residence, James is killed in a shooting party. Dorian feels safe and wants to change his life. He goes back to London to see if the picture shows any sign of repentance, but the canvas is even more disgusting. He stabs it, but in so doing kills himself. The servants find a beautiful portrait, but it is hard to recognize Dorian in the wrinkled old man lying dead on the floor. Analysis In the novel there is the theme of double: 1. “The picture of Dorian Gray” by Oscar Wilde: double nature of Dorian, one in the picture (his soul is in it) and one in person (he lives without a soul). He doesn’t change, in fact his appearance isn’t real (eternal youth). The surname Gray means a mixture of white and black that we can associate with “good vs evil”. Oscar Wilde was Irish (at the time all Ireland was not part of the UK) but he wanted to live in London, he ended his life there in Paris. 2. “The strange case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde” by Robert Louis Stevenson: this book tells about a doctor who is a scientific man that does some experiments about the double nature of man (good and evil parts of human’s mind) and creates a potion that separates the good part of him from the evil one. Stevenson lives in the same period of Oscar Wilde (decadentism), he is Scottish and grows up in a rich family of engineers because of his desire of becoming an artist he refuses his family. The choice of the name used in the novel is interesting because Mr Hyde remember us the verb “to hide”, in fact Hyde was the hidden part of Dr Jekyll, instead Dr Jekyll remember us “je” which in french means “I” and “kyll” that is the verb “to kill” like Dr Jekyll killed himself trying to stop Mr Hyde. 3. “Frankenstein” by Mary Shelley: this book tells the story of a doctor, a scientist that creates a creature (like a monster) from some parts of the human body and gives life to it using electricity, so we can talk about cloning. This book is written before the other two novels, during the romantic age (different time and culture), it’s the first science-fiction story without the theme of magic, but using science. In all three books there are gothic elements that generate fear like horror stories. Dorian, son of love and death, lives his public life among the upper class, his public image represented by his eternal youth and beauty, obsession for respectability he wants to appear pure and beautiful. He goes to the theatre to the opera, but when he is on his own like in the opium tends, he does things that remind us of the west end. The relationship with Cybil, girls from the west end. In the novel this double Dorian (which name in Ancient Greece meant “the perfect art”) borns from his wish of staying young, in fact Lord Henry worms him and opens his eyes in the importance of youth and beauty. The name of Lord Henry reminds us “Old Harry” that was the name used for the Devil, so we can clearly see that Dorian with his wish had had a pact with the devil, a theme used for the first time by Faust. Because of this we call Dorian a Faustian hero. Preface He added the famous Preface (Manifesto of the English Aesthetic movement) : a series of aphorisms in answer to some of the criticisms. Preface is a sort of introduction, it explains the purpose, declaration of intentions. Lyrical ballads are the “Manifesto of English Romanticism”. The preface has double meaning: it is an answer to many critics on his book, despite the great success of his novel. He reviewed his book and in a new edition he added a preface made up with a set of aphorisms, becoming in this way the “Manifesto of English Aesthetic movement”. In it we can find some indications of how his novel is and how to approach it. “The artist” is repeated many times, like the figure of “The critic” that is who write literary critics and we can also find “Those who” that shows us the figure of the reader. We can find a set of people that explains how he sees that position. “The artist is the creator of beautiful things” this phrase shows his adherence to the Aesthetic movement. “The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things” he translates what is written in the book. The critic speaks about his impression and many times he takes a lot of himself and can misrepresent. According to Wilde we don’t have to look beyond the beauty and if we see something else it is wrong. The right way is to see only beauty in the beauty things. “There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. books are well written, or badly written” we have to talk only about art and beauty and not other things, not moral values. “No artist desires to prove something ” “No artist has ethical sympathies” is like a provocation. If we find some moral expression, vices or virtues, for the artist is only material and it is not a message. “All art is quite useless”: because it doesn't have to teach us something. (perchè è fine a se stessa) Oscar Wilde’s life Oscar Wilde was born on 16 October 1854 in Dublin, Ireland. His father, Sir William Wilde, was an important surgeon and his mother was an Irish nationalist poet. He studied at Trinity College in Dublin and won a scholarship to study at Oxford University, where he was an outstanding scholar and promising poet. While at Oxford he was deeply influenced by aesthetic theories of two eminent art critics (Ruskin and Walter Pater) accepting the theory of “Art for Art’s Sake”. He was a great aesthete and pursued beauty in all its forms (literature, arts, clothes, interior design). When he was 25, he moved to London where he began writing and mixing in high society. He became a celebrity for his extraordinary wit and his characteristic style of dress as a fashionable “dandy”, he was also a brilliant conversationalist and an eccentric, he liked to be in the centre of attention. Wilde’s dandy is an aristocrat whose elegance is a symbol of the superiority of his spirit. A dandy is a very elegant man who gave great importance to his appearance, refined and eccentric lifestyle and brilliant conversation. Wilde was accused of homosexuality, which was illegal in England at the time. He was sentenced to two years imprisonment and hard labour. After his release from prison Wilde was a ruined man, he died in poverty in Paris on 30 November 1900. The Picture of Dorian Gray was Wilde’s only novel and it was immediately attacked by the critics and created a scandal because of its ambiguous morality and allusions, they considered it immoral. However the scandal that followed contributed to the success of the novel, he also added the famous Preface (Manifesto of the English Aesthetic movement) : a series of aphorisms in answer to some of the criticisms. He was one of the most successful playwrights of late Victorian. The Aesthetic Movement The long reign of Queen Victoria (1837-1901) was a period of great social, moral and intellectual changes and artists reacted in different ways. The Derby Day is a painting in which the artist depicts different social types by representing their clothes and faces in detail, showing the sharp contrast between the different social classes. Class distinction was prevalent in all aspects of Victorian society and it was portrayed in the literature of the period (from Dickens to Wilde). A group of painters called the Pre-Raphaelites was formed in 1848. They depicted objects and people in a very clear way, and everything was chosen for its symbolic meaning, as in the Middle Ages. The Pre- Raphaelites convey a moral message through their works.