Oscar Wilde's Aestheticism and Dorian Gray: A Study of Art, Beauty, and Morality, Appunti di Inglese

Scarica Oscar Wilde's Aestheticism and Dorian Gray: A Study of Art, Beauty, and Morality e più Appunti in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! INGLESE 1.1 O. WILDE (1854-1900) - 1854, Dublin, famous father doctor and mother translator and poet - 1874, graduation at Trinity College (Dublin), studies at Magdalen College (Oxford) and friendship with Walter Pater and John Ruskin (aesthetics) + London, life as a popular and eccentric dandy - 1882, lecture tour in America and movement to Paris (meeting of Mallarmé, Verlaine, Hugo, Zola and Balzac) - 1884, marriage with Castance Lloyd and 2 children - 1895, arrested and imprisoned in Reading Gaol for homosexual offences - 1897, movement to France with a pseudonym and life of poverty and obscurity - 1900, Paris (meningitis) 1.1.1 Aestheticism The aestheticism is a movement born in the 2° half of the XIX century and it represents another tendency that, during the late Victorian period, rejected its values, in particular it rejects the utility of art. ➔ No moral, political nor educational aim of art BUT just art for art’s sake, just expression of beauty and pursuit of pleasure (language of the senses, through which art has to express beauty) ➔ Artist’s task: to feel and look for sensations and transmit them (the pleasure of beauty) to the audience Walter Pater, an Oxford teacher and English essayist (ex. The Renaissance) and critic, is the theorist of the aestheticism and suggested that life itself should be lived in the spirit of art. He rejected the Victorian morality and its religion view of life and claimed that the only certainty is art, which is the only thing that can stop time (Shakespeare influence), in this context the artist’s aim is to stop time through art. Aestheticism flourished partly as a reaction against the materialism of the burgeoning middle class, assumed to be composed of philistines (individuals ignorant of art) who responded to art in a generally unrefined manner. To express the most potentiality of art, the artist has to live fully, to enjoy every moment of life, to try experiences that can satisfy his senses and make him feel alive, to look for pleasure and beauty (NOT to being useful to people) ➔ Detachment of the artist from society, he doesn’t need to conform to society and doesn’t need its approval because he’s unique (like Baudelaire) A person that lives in this way is a dandy, someone always looking for pleasure in every form, elegant and bizarre in look (carnation as symbol of beauty and mystery, as something unconventional and different from normal), that wants to show off his beauty and his best appearance, that feel aristocratic in the spirit, one leading the search for beauty in an age marked by shameful class inequality, social hypocrisy, and bourgeois complacency. 1.1.2 The picture of Dorian Gray - 1890, first published in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine (criticized: dangerously subversive, “poisonous book”) Plot: The artist Basil Hallward decides to donate Dorian Grays’ portrait to him, that, influenced by the amoral aesthete Lord Henry Wotton, wishes to remain young as he is in that moment in place of the portrait, that begins to show his evil gestures (ex. refusal of the actress Sybil Vane that after suicides). Then he shown Basil the signs on his portrait and kills him to prevent him from revealing his secret. When Dorian realizes the horror of his acts, as the portrait is becoming more and more ugly, decides to destroy the portrait. This gesture results in Dorian death and in the portrait returning to his original beauty. ➔ It may belong to the genre of a mystery story (Dorian remaining young, portrait with the signs of evil, dark and gloomy houses and atmosphere), and a crime/mystery story (split personality with the evil side that causes the death of the main hero). The story presents to the reader 3 main characters - Dorian Gray: dandy that stands for the idea of beauty and innocence (corrupted by the influence of Lord H. Wotton), his life is devoted onto pleasure and beauty (=living every experience, fullness of life) and can’t stop this process (no regrets for morality); he represents Wilde (both dandies) ➔ Chapter 11 (suspension of the action to explain this theory), Dorian’s philosophy of “new hedonism”: INGLESE o Cult of beauty: Dorian’s beauty is the object of widespread worship, and its contemplation is like a religion to him, an attitude that let him feel life fully o Choice of a life beyond common morality: Dorian feels entitled to investigate all the possibilities offered by life, irrespective of the limits imposed by conventional morality. o “Worship of the sense”: re-valuation of the senses, refining them with the intellect (bridge between senses and spirit by a theory of the “spiritualization of the senses”). The pleasure he will derive from that combination will be that of getting a full knowledge of life, concentrating on each single moment of it with the awareness of its uniqueness and briefness (failure at the end of the story) o Life as a work of art (“My life is the first and the greatest form of art”): reversal of the traditional idea that it is art to imitate life ➔ Similarities with D’Annunzio’s Andrea Sperelli (main character of “Il piacere”), both characters looking for pleasure with its raids into the exotic - Basil Hallward: artist who doesn’t fully reflect Wilde’s spirit, maybe obsessed and in love with Dorian (he had put too much of himself in the portrait), he tries to conduct Dorians towards a moral life (he’s killed by him) - Lord Hanry Wotton: amoral aesthete and responsible for Dorian’s debauchery ➔ He gives Dorian an unnamed yellow book, possibly Huysmans’ À rebours, a key text for the Aesthetic movement that influenced Dorian to have his wish (about young age and beauty) Even if Wilde pretends that art doesn’t need to have a morality, the story is allegorical. After Dorian’s wish, the portrait becomes his moral debauchery, his bad conscious and dark side and at the end Dorian, cannot but hate the ugliness he has created and ends by destroying it and himself, because every excess must be punished (meaning also that life can’t be escaped and men are destinated to die). ➔ Maybe Wilde’s hypothesis that there may exist an individual who obeys only to his own rules and can live in a harmonious combination of spirit and senses; Dorian’s failure depending on times, not ready for such a new man and a new order of morality based on the potential and energy of the individual (that should replace the old one, given by traditional Christianity, superstitions and paralyzing code of morality) (sort of Nietzsche’s Übermensch) ➔ Awareness that living life as if it was a work of art is not really possible (no man can live without a conscience and ethical responsibilities), art is pure fiction, it is true and false at the same time, it can include everything and deny everything, it is eternal and everlasting due to its nature as pure artifice As for the narration, it has an external unobtrusive narrator (3° person) and an internal perspective (Dorian’s point of view) that helps the process of identification of the reader. The language used is a sensual one, belonging to the senses (words, expressions, verbs, adjectives connected with the senses), elegant and formally perfect (paradoxes, witty dialogues, words used in a perfect dictionary). 1.1.2.1 Preface The preface of the work, added later as a reaction to the criticism (immorality), where he explains his viewpoint in art and his intentions (beauty is the purpose of art and its only defense, any criticism made on moral grounds is invalid because it fundamentally misunderstands art), is considered the manifesto of the aestheticism. It is written in epigrams, short and witty sentences presented with paradox and irony that have a meaning, that sums up the philosophical tenets of the Aestheticism. It argues in favor of Aestheticism while the story seems to warn us about the dangers of living one’s life according to this philosophy (Dorian is punished for his life of debauchery at the end of the story and his theory turns out a failure). 1. The artist is a creator of beautiful things Artists (and writers) should create art not for their own fame or popularity but simply to display the beauty in the world. 2. To reveal art and conceal the artist is art’s aim Once a work of art is created, it is independent from the creator and has a life of its own, which is eternal and survives the artist; it should be also objective, as Naturalism and Modernism said (foreshadow of the modernist poet T.S. Eliot, who claims that the artist must be absent in the artwork). ➔ Objectivity of art in contrast with the greatest symbol in the novel, Basil’s portrait: the artist is afraid he has put too much of himself in the portrait while Dorian is able to see his own beauty. He