Scarica Oscar Wilde: The Artist & Aesthete - Life & Analysis of 'Dorian Gray' e più Appunti in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! OSCAR WILDE (1854-1900): THE BRILLIANT ARTIST AND AESTHETE Oscar Wilde was born in Dublin in 1854. He became a disciple of Walter Peter, accepting the theory of Art for Art's Sake and, in London, became a fashionable dandy for his extraordinary wit and his extravagant way of dressing. In 1881, Wilde edited POEMS and was engaged for a tour in the United States. He told that Aestheticism was a search for the baeautiful, a science through witch men looked for the relationship existing between painting, sculpture and poetry, witch were simply different forms of the same truth. (On his return to Europe in 1883 he married Constance Lloyd, who bore him two children.) His presence became a social event and is remarks appeared in the most fashionable London magazines. In the late 1880s, Wilde's literary talent was revealed by a series of short stories (The Canterville Ghost, Lord Arthur Savile's Crime, The Happy Prince and Other Tales), written for his children and the novel The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891). After he developed an interest in drama (The Importance of Being Earnest and tragedy in French Salomé). The former of the novel and the tragedy was considered immoral and the latter was prevented from appearing on the London stage due to its presumed obscenity. Wilde met Lord Alfred Douglas and he was convicted of homosexual practices and subsequently sentenced to two years of labor. While in prison he wrotw De Profundis, a long letter to explain his life. He died in Paris in 1900. THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY (1891) AND THE THEME OF BEAUTY The story is told by an unobtrusive third-person narrator and the settings are vividly described. The story is allegorical;is the story of a man who sells his soul to the devil so that all his desires might be satisfied. In the novel this soul is the picture, which records the signs of the time. Wilde plays on the Renaissance idea of the correspondence existing between the physical and spiritual realms (beautiful people are moral people, ugly people are immoral) and the picture represents the dark side of Dorian's personality. The moral of the novel is that every excess must be punished and reality cannot be escaped. The picture can be seen as a symbol of the immorality and bad conscience of the Victorian middle class. Finally the picture restored to its original beauty, illustrates Wilde's theories of art: art survives people, art is eternal. THE STORY. The novel is set in London at the end of the 19th century. The protagonist is Dorian Gray a young man. Dorian's beauty fascinates a painter, Basil Hallward, who decides to paint his portrait; the signs of age experience and vice appear on the portrait. Dorian lives only for pleasure and when painter sees the corruped image of the picture, dorian kills him. Dorian wants to free himself on the portrait and stabs it, but in doing so he mysteriously kills himself. In the very moment of his death, the picture returns to its original purity. DORIAN'S DEATH It was night. In the street everyone indicated and staring at him. He was tired of hearing his own name now. When he reached home he began to think; he wanted to change but.. was here no hope for him? He loathed his own beauty now. He thought of the death of Basil Hallaward, that weighed most upon his mind, but it was the living death of his own soul that trouble him. The portrait marred his life. A new life was what he wanted. He crept upstairs and saw the portrait; he could see no change but it was horrible. He looked round and saw the knife that had stabbed Hallward; he would kill the past and when that was dead he would e free. As it had killed the painter, so it would kill the painter's work. He seized the thing, and stabbed the picture with it. There was a cry heard; the servant woke and crept out their rooms. After he got the coachman and one of the footmen and creapt upstairs. They entered into the room throught thr windows because the door was closed. They found a hanging upon the wall a spendid portrait of their master, in all the wander of his exquisite youth and beauty. Lying on the flor was a dead man with a knife in his heart. He was wrinkled and loathsome of visage. It was not till they had examined the rings that they recognized who it was.
