Oscar wilde - life and works, Appunti di Inglese

Scarica Oscar wilde - life and works e più Appunti in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! Oscar Wilde Was bom in Dublin in fact he was Irish. Studied in Oxford. Wrote : @ The canterville ghost @ The picture of Dorian Gray (after this he developed an interest in drama and revived the comedy of manners). ® The importance of being earnest His years of triumph ended with his trial on charges of homosexuality, that illegal in Britain. While in prison he wrote de profondis, a long letter to Boise. When he was released, he was a broken poor man; his wife refused to see him, and he went to exile in France. He published the ballad of reading gaol under his prison identity “C.3.3” before his death in Paris. The rebel and the dandy He was an aesthetic poet as he affirmed “my life is like a work of art”. He lived the double role of rebel and dandy. > This term refers to a man who was proud of his appearance even though he was wearing unordinary clothes. Vanity, extravagance and refinement were linked to a more positive idea of the Dandy. He rejected the didacticism of the Victorian novels. Plot and settings The novel is set in London at the end of the 19th century. The protagonist is Dorian Gray, a young man whose beauty fascinates painter, Basil Hallward, who decides to paint his portrait. Under the influence of the brilliant but corrupt Lord Henry Wotton, he began a life of pleasure. While the young man's desires are satisfied, including that of eternal youth, the signs of age, experience and vices appear on the portrait. Dorian makes use of everybody, even letting people die because he is not sensitive enough. When he sees the corrupted image of the portrait, he stabs it but he kills himself (there is the theme of double, where he is a rebel and an ipocrit). When Dorian dies, the picture returns to its original purity, and Dorian's face becomes old and loathsome' (disgusting). Characters Dorian Gray represents the ideal youth, beauty and innocence. He is first introduced by what the painter says of him, raising the reader's expectations. When he first appears he is immature, but the reader knows about his purity and innocence through the narrator's words. Dorian is influenced by Lord Henry, who teaches him about hedonism and starts a life of pleasure and sensation. In the end, his vanity and selfishness ruined him, and the portrait represents the degradation of his soul. Lord Henry Wotton (late Victorian novelist) is an intellectual, a brilliant talker, apparently superficial but extremely sharp in his criticism of institutions, considered sacred by his contemporaries, such as marriage and the Church. Basil Hallward is an intellectual who falls in love with Dorian's beauty and innocence. He is eventually killed by Dorian because his painting and his passion are considered responsible for his existence. He becomes a sad example of how a good artist can be destroyed in a sacrifice for art. Narrative technique This story is told by an unobtrusive third- person narrator. The perspective is internal, and this allows an identification between the reader and the character. The settings are described with words appealing to the senses. Allegorical meaning The picture represents the dark side of Dorian's personality, his double, which he tries to forget by locking it in a room. The moral of this novel is that every excess must be punished and there's no escape from reality. When Dorian destroys the picture, he cannot avoid the punishment for all his sins, that is, actually death. The corrupted picture is a symbol of the immorality and bad consciousness of the Victorian middle class, while Dorian and his innocent appearance, are symbols of bourgeois hypocrisy. When the picture is restored to its original beauty, it illustrates Wilde's theory of art that is “art survives people, art is eternal”. The painter's studio Blue words: the setting in place and the description of the room furniture The huge window is the connecting element between the room and the outside. Highlighted in light blue: the characters’ actions Highlighted in yellow: the two characters are talking about the portrait of a handsome young man done by the painter and the fact that he does not want to exhibit it Highlighted in green: phrases linked to the sense of hearing